MIMO Block-Fading Channels With Mismatched CSI

We study transmission over multiple-input multiple-output block-fading channels with imperfect channel state information (CSI) at both the transmitter and receiver. In particular, based on mismatched decoding theory for a fixed channel realization, we investigate the largest achievable rates with independent and identically distributed inputs and the nearest neighbor decoder. We then study the corresponding information outage probability in the high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regime and analyze the interplay between estimation error variances at the transmitter and receiver to determine the optimal outage exponent, defined as the high-SNR slope of the outage probability plotted in a logarithmic–logarithmic scale against the SNR. We demonstrate that despite operating with imperfect CSI, power adaptation can offer substantial gains in terms of outage exponent.