Per antenna/stream union bound as a channel quality indicator for MIMO systems

We address the issue of rate allocation for layered coded MIMO (multiple input multiple output) systems for a given flat fading channel with APP (a posteriori probability) decoding. Transmission parameters for a given MIMO channel are found using per antenna/stream union bound that enables one to find the SNR (signal to noise ratio) of an equivalent AWGN (additive white Gaussian noise) channel for each transmit antenna/stream. Comparison with the ergodic Shannon capacity is made for some example rate controlled systems.