In this paper the performance limits and design principles of rateless codes over fading channels are studied. The diversity-multiplexing tradeoff (DMT) is used to analyze the system performance for all possible transmission rates. It is revealed from the analysis that the design of such rateless codes follows the design principle of approximately universal codes for parallel multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channels, in which each sub-channel is a MIMO channel. More specifically, it is shown that for a single-input single-output (SISO) channel, the previously developed permutation codes of unit length for parallel channels having rate LR can be transformed directly into rateless codes of length L having multiple rate levels (R, 2R, . . ., LR), to achieve the DMT performance limit.
In this paper, the fundamental performance tradeoff of the delay-limited multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) automatic retransmission request (ARQ) channel is explored. In particular, we extend the diversity-multiplexing tradeoff investigated by Zheng and Tse in standard delay-limited MIMO channels with coherent detection to the ARQ scenario. We establish the three-dimensional tradeoff between reliability (i.e., diversity), throughput (i.e., multiplexing gain), and delay (i.e., maximum number of retransmissions). This tradeoff quantifies the ARQ diversity gain obtained by leveraging the retransmission delay to enhance the reliability for a given multiplexing gain. Interestingly, ARQ diversity appears even in long-term static channels where all the retransmissions take place in the same channel state. Furthermore, by relaxing the input power constraint allowing variable power levels in different retransmissions, we show that power control can be used to dramatically increase the diversity advantage. Our analysis reveals some important insights on the benefits of ARQ in slow-fading MIMO channels. In particular, we show that 1) allowing for a sufficiently large retransmission delay results in an almost flat diversity-multiplexing tradeoff, and hence, renders operating at high multiplexing gain more advantageous; 2) MIMO ARQ channels quickly approach the ergodic limit when power control is employed. Finally, we complement our information-theoretic analysis with an incremental redundancy lattice space-time (IR-LAST) coding scheme which is shown, through a random coding argument, to achieve the optimal tradeoff(s). An integral component of the optimal IR-LAST coding scheme is a list decoder, based on the minimum mean-square error (MMSE) lattice decoding principle, for joint error detection and correction. Throughout the paper, our theoretical claims are validated by numerical results The diversity-multiplexing (D-M) tradeoff in a multi antenna channel with optimized resolution-constrained channel state feedback is characterized. The concept of minimum guaranteed multiplexing gain in the forward link is introduced and shown to significantly influence the optimal D-M tradeoff. It is demonstrated that power control based on the feedback is instrumental in achieving the D-M tradeoff, and that rate adaptation is important in obtaining a high diversity gain even at high rates. A criterion to determine finite-length codes to be tradeoff optimal is presented, leading to a useful geometric characterization of the class of extended approximately universal codes. With codes from this class, the optimal D-M tradeoff is achievable by the combination of a feedback-dependent power controller and a single code-book for single-rate or two codebooks for adaptive-rate transmission. Finally, lower bounds to the optimal D-M tradeoffs based on Gaussian coding arguments are also studied. In contrast to the no-feedback case, these random coding bounds are only asymptotically tight, but can quickly approach the optimal tradeoff even with moderate codeword lengths.