Asymptotic Performance Analysis of Coded BLAST Architectures with Statistical Rate and Power Allocations

In this paper we first analyze some mathematical properties of ergodic capacity and outage capacity functions of the layers in Bell labs layered space-time (BLAST) architectures employing successive decoding and interference cancellation. We then present statistical rate allocation and power allocation methods that optimize the asymptotic performance of BLAST architectures. Since the methods are developed by using ergodic capacity and outage capacity functions of the layers, the allocated rates and powers depend only on a given channel statistic. Finally, we prove that the rate allocation yields a better asymptotic performance than the power allocation. Numerical results show that BLAST architectures with the rate and power allocation perform better by 4 dB and 3 dB, respectively, than a BLAST architecture with the same rate and power in all layers.