Noncoherent SIMO pre-log via resolution of singularities

We establish a lower bound on the noncoherent capacity pre-log of a temporally correlated Rayleigh block-fading single-input multiple-output (SIMO) channel. Our result holds for arbitrary rank Q of the channel correlation matrix, arbitrary block-length L > Q, and arbitrary number of receive antennas R, and includes the result in Morgenshtern et al. (2010) as a special case. It is well known that the capacity pre-log for this channel in the single-input single-output (SISO) case is given by 1−Q/L, where Q/L is the penalty incurred by channel uncertainty. Our result reveals that this penalty can be reduced to 1/L by adding only one receive antenna, provided that L ≥ 2Q − 1 and the channel correlation matrix satisfies mild technical conditions. The main technical tool used to prove our result is Hironaka's celebrated theorem on resolution of singularities in algebraic geometry.