On the MIMO Capacity with Multiple Linear Transmit Covariance Constraints

This paper presents an efficient approach to computing the capacity of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channels under multiple linear transmit covariance constraints (LTCCs). LTCCs are general enough to include several special types of power constraints as special cases such as the sum power constraint (SPC), per-antenna power constraint (PAPC), or a combination thereof. Despite its importance and generality, most of the existing literature considers either SPC or PAPC independently. Efficient solutions to the computation of the MIMO capacity with a combination of SPC and PAPC have been recently reported, but were only dedicated to multiple-input single-output (MISO) systems. For the general case of LTCCs, we propose a low-complexity semi-closed-form approach to the computation of the MIMO capacity. Specifically, a modified minimax duality is first invoked to transform the considered problem in the broadcast channel into an equivalent minimax problem in the dual multiple access channel. Then alternating optimization and concave-convex procedure are utilized to derive water-filling-based algorithms to find a saddle point of the minimax problem. This is different from the state-of-the-art solutions to the considered problem, which are based on interior-point or subgradient methods. Analytical and numerical results are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed low-complexity solution under various MIMO scenarios.