Introduction

The use of multiple antennas at the transmitter and receiver in wireless systems, popularly known as MIMO (multiple-input multiple-output) technology, has rapidly gained in popularity over the past decade due to its powerful performance-enhancing capabilities. Communication in wireless channels is impaired predominantly by multi-path fading. Multi-path is the arrival of the transmitted signal at an intended receiver through differing angles and/or differing time delays and/or differing frequency (i.e., Doppler) shifts due to the scattering of electromagnetic waves in the environment. Consequently, the received signal power fluctuates in space (due to angle spread) and/or frequency (due to delay spread) and/or time (due to Doppler spread) through the random superposition of the impinging multi-path components. This random fluctuation in signal level, known as fading, can severely affect the quality and reliability of wireless communication. Additionally, the constraints posed by limited power and scarce frequency bandwidth make the task of designing high data rate, high reliability wireless communication systems extremely challenging.