Cross-layer design for MIMO Nakagami fading channels in the presence of Gaussian channel estimation errors

In the context of MIMO systems, the issue of cross-layer design is receiving more and more attention from a research point of view due to the huge performance improvements at stake. In this paper, we investigate the cross-layer combining of adaptive modulation and truncated automatic repeat request (T-ARQ) in the general framework of MIMO systems employing orthogonal space-time block coding (STBC), in the presence of frequency nonselective Nakagami fading, and subject to channel estimation errors at the receiver. In particular, we focus on studying the effects of Gaussian channel estimation errors at the receiver on the probability of outage, the average packet error rate and the average spectral efficiency that can be achieved through the combining of two adaptive transmission techniques at the physical and link layer levels