Transmit antenna selection for MIMO systems with V-BLAST type detection

In an attempt to improve the spectral efficiency of wireless communication systems, MIMO spatial multiplexing architectures have been introduced. V-BLAST is proposed as an efficient receiver structure in terms of performance and computational complexity. We introduce a transmit antenna selection scheme for a V-BLAST type receiver with an assumption that channel information is available at the transmit side. With a given MIMO channel matrix, we derive a simplified channel capacity and vector symbol error probability in V-BLAST. Using these results, the paper provides the optimal criteria for transmit antenna selection in terms of capacity and error probability. These criteria are based on tap weight vectors in V-BLAST detection. Additionally, we propose sub-optimal methods that achieve near-optimal performance with low computational load. To verify the efficiency of the proposed schemes, computer simulation results are presented.