Average Achievable Rate and Average BLER Analyses for MIMO Short-Packet Communication Systems

Multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) systems significantly increase the network throughput and coverage probability for short-packet communications. In this paper, a tight lower bound on the average achievable rate of MIMO short-packet communication systems is theoretically derived, considering flat uncorrelated Rayleigh fading MIMO channels. The derivations are based on the eigenvalue analysis of a Wishart matrix and Jensen's inequality. Given the actual transmission rate, a tight approximation on the average block error rate (BLER) of MIMO short-packet communication systems is also provided, which is based on the moment generating function and inverse Laplace transform. Numerical results demonstrate that both our theoretically derived analytical average achievable rate lower bound and approximate average BLER are almost the same as the simulation results.