The outage capacity of BLAST for MIMO channels

This paper is concerned with multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channels that experience quasi-static flat fading and Gaussian noise. The information-theoretic quantity of outage capacity is precisely defined as it relates to the successive-decoding approach known as the BLAST (or Bell Labs layered space-time) architecture. It is shown that finding the outage capacity-of a BLAST system is equivalent to the solution of a K-parameter optimization problem, where K is the number of transmit antennas. This optimization is solved and the resulting outage capacity of BLAST is found to sustain a loss relative to the unconstrained (i.e., optimal) system, though it still provides for very high-rate data transmission.