Error performance of MIMO-BICM with zero-forcing receivers in spatially-correlated Rayleigh channels

In this letter we derive tight analytical expressions for the coded bit error rate of MIMO bit-interleaved coded modulation (BICM) in spatially-correlated Rayleigh fading channels. We consider the case where low complexity zero-forcing receivers are employed. The analysis is simpler and more direct than the standard BICM error event expurgation technique, and yields efficient, accurate expressions for the error probability. Based on the analytical results, we obtain the diversity order and show that it is independent of the spatial correlation. Moreover, we show that the presence of spatial correlation induces an SNR loss with respect to i.i.d. channels. We quantify this loss, and show that it is a function of the antenna configuration and the eigenvalues of the spatial correlation matrices, and is independent of the coding and modulation parameters.