Performance analysis of Rayleigh-product MIMO channels with optimal beamforming

This paper presents an analytical performance investigation of a Rayleigh-product multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channel using optimum transmit-receive beamforming. By deriving the closed-form expressions for the cumulative distribution function (C.D.F.), and the probability density function (P.D.F.), we provide a complete statistical characterization of the received signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the Rayleigh-product MIMO channel. These new statistical results further permit the analysis for the outage probability and the symbol-error-rate (SER), which are important performance indications of MIMO systems. In addition, we examine, in detail, an important special case corresponding to the degenerate keyhole scenario, for which we present insightful closed-form expressions for the diversity order and array gain. ©2008 Crown Copyright