MIMO-BICM: Fundamentals, Analysis, and Design

Research Project, 2012 – 2015

Bit-interleaved coded modulation (BICM) is the newest paradigm in the design of bandwidth-efficient communication systems, which combined with multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antenna technologies results in systems offering high transmission rates. A MIMO-BICM transmitter uses a channel encoder cascaded with a bit-level interleaver, a multilevel modulator, and multiple transmitter antennas, with the reverse operations in the receiver. Despite not being fully understood theoretically, BICM and MIMO-BICM have been rapidly adopted in wireless commercial systems such as 3G/4G telephony, WiFi 802.11n, ultrawideband transceivers, and digital video broadcasting. The BICM paradigm is also very likely to be used in future wireless standards. The philosophy behind today´s BICM designs is based on independent optimization of its building blocks, i.e., a typical BICM system is built simply by concatenating blocks that perform well as independent entities. This gives the designer flexibility, but it inherently introduces some suboptimality in the design. The overall goal of this application is to jointly optimize the building blocks of MIMO-BICM systems, while maintaining an affordable complexity. To this end, we will develop general analysis tools and methodologies, which we will then use to propose improved designs with applications in future wireless communication standards.