Combined Effects of HPA Distortion and Channel Estimation Error on the Capacity of MIMO-OFDM Communication Systems

In this paper we study the effect of both high power amplifiers' (HPA's) distortion and channel estimation error on the capacity of MIMO-OFDM communication systems. Analytical expressions to evaluate the combined effect of these impairments on the capacity of MIMO-OFDM system, for different MIMO and OFDM configurations employed in practical wireless systems are presented. Simulation results show that that MIMO systems with higher dimensions suffer more capacity degradation than those with lower dimensions. The results also show that the capacity loss experienced by the system due to these impairments, is fairly constant across all OFDM configurations (roughly estimated as 8 bits/sec/Hz).