Finite-Blocklength Bounds on the Maximum Coding Rate of Rician Fading Channels with Applications to Pilot-Assisted Transmission

Paper in proceedings, 2017

We present nonasymptotic bounds on the maximum coding rate achievable over a Rician block-fading channel for a fixed packet size and a fixed packet error probability. Our bounds, which apply to the scenario where no \emph{a priori} channel state information is available at the receiver, allow one to quantify the tradeoff between the rate gains resulting from the exploitation of time-frequency diversity and the rate loss resulting from fast channel variations and pilot-symbol overhead.