Abstract

Zero forcing (ZF) detector is unable to exploit all of the available diversity order of a spatial multiplexing multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. Thus, its performance is clearly inferior to the maximum likelihood (ML) detector. However, this is no longer true if the MIMO channel matrix is orthogonal. Motivated by this statement, in this paper, we propose a novel precoding approach for channel matrix orthogonalization for spatial multiplexing MIMO systems. In general, at the transmitter, we first find out the precoding matrix that transforms a MIMO channel matrix into an orthogonal matrix. After that, at the receiver, the ZF detector applied to the orthogonal channel matrix obtain the same optimum performance of ML detector. Simulation results show that the proposed approach achieves the optimum performance with reduced complexity at the expense of a small increase in the total average transmitted power. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.