Near-Capacity FEC Codes for Non-Regenerative MIMO-Aided Relays

In this contribution, we derive the Discrete-input Continuous-output Memoryless Channel (DCMC) capacity of the non-regenerative Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) relay channel, when the source-to-destination link is inferior and hence considered absent. We design near-capacity Forward Error Correction (FEC) codes for approaching this capacity limit. It is shown that our design is capable of approaching the DCMC capacity within 0.4dB, when communicating over uncorrelated Raleigh fading channels, where the source node, relay node and destination node are equipped with two antennas each.