Bit-padding information guided channel hopping

In the context of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communications, we propose a bit-padding information guided channel hopping (BP-IGCH) scheme which breaks the limitation that the number of transmit antennas has to be a power of two based on the IGCH concept. The proposed scheme prescribes different bit-lengths to be mapped onto the indices of the transmit antennas and then uses padding technique to avoid error propagation. Numerical results and comparisons, on both the capacity and the bit error rate performances, are provided and show the advantage of the proposed scheme. The BP-IGCH scheme not only offers lower complexity to realize the design flexibility, but also achieves better performance. © 2011 IEEE.