Integer-Forcing Linear Receivers: A Design Criterion for Full-Diversity STBCs

In multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) fading channels, the design criterion for full-diversity space-time block codes (STBCs) is primarily determined by the decoding method at the receiver. Although constructions of STBCs have predominantly matched the maximum-likelihood (ML) decoder, design criteria and constructions of full- diversity STBCs have also been reported for low- complexity linear receivers. A new receiver architecture called Integer-Forcing (IF) linear receiver has been proposed to MIMO channels by Zhan et al. which showed promising results for the high-rate V-BLAST encoding scheme. In this work we address the design of full-diversity STBCs for IF linear receivers. We derive an upper bound on the probability of decoding error, and show that STBCs that satisfy the non-vanishing singular value (NVS) property provide full-diversity for the IF receiver. We also present simulation results to demonstrate that linear designs with NVS property provide full diversity for IF receiver. As a special case of our analysis on STBCs, we present an upper bound on the error probability for the V- BLAST architecture presented by Zhan et al., and demonstrate that the IF linear receivers provide full receive diversity. Our results supplement the existing outage probability based results for the IF receiver.