Achievable information rates and coding for MIMO systems over ISI channels and frequency-selective fading channels

We propose a simulation-based method to compute the achievable information rates for general multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) intersymbol interference (ISI) channels with inputs chosen from a finite alphabet. This method is applicable to both deterministic and stochastic channels. As an example of the stochastic MIMO ISI channels, we consider the multiantenna systems over frequency-selective fading channels, and quantify the improvement in the achievable information rates provided by the additional frequency diversity (for both ergodic and nonergodic cases). In addition, we consider the multiaccess multiantenna system and present some results on the achievable information-rate region. As for the deterministic MIMO ISI channels, we use the binary-input multitrack magnetic recording system as an example, which employs multiple write and read heads for data storage. Our results show that the multitrack recording channels have significant advantages over the single-track channels, in terms of the achievable information rates when the inter-track interference is considered. We further consider practical coding schemes over both stochastic and deterministic MIMO ISI channels, and compare their performance with the information-theoretical limits. Specifically, we demonstrate that the performance of the turbo coding/decoding scheme is only about 1.0 dB away from the information-theoretical limits at a bit-error rate of 10(-5) for large interleaver lengths.