836
2, FEBRUARY 2009
On the Combining Schemes for
MIMO Systems with Hybrid ARQ
Edward W. Jang, Student Member, IEEE, Jungwon Lee, Member, IEEE, Hui-Ling Lou, Member, IEEE,
and John M. Cioffi, Fellow, IEEE
Abstract—Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems
with hybrid automatic-repeat-request (HARQ) promises high
throughput with high reliability. However, combining-scheme
design for such systems faces challenges, the presence of inter-
ference and the existence of multiple signal-to-interference-and-
noise power ratios (SINRs). To overcome these challenges, this
paper suggests to design combining schemes with the objective of
directly optimizing the log-likelihood ratio (LLR) values. Using
this approach, this paper proposes several combining schemes
and then analyzes them based on three key design factors:
decoding performance, scalability, and memory requirement.
Computer simulations under the IEEE 802.16e standard settings
show the performances of the proposed combining schemes,
which align well with the analysis. Based on the analyses and
the simulation results, this paper suggests preferable combining
schemes respectively for MIMO systems with HARQ-Chase
combining (HARQ-CC) and HARQ-incremental redundancy
(HARQ-IR).
Index Terms—MIMO, hybrid ARQ, symbol-level combin-
ing, distance-level combining, maximal-ratio combining, bit-level
combining.
I. I NTRODUCTION
H YBRID automatic-repeat-request (HARQ) systems in-
corporate both forward-error-correcting (FEC) codes
and an ARQ system to achieve high throughput and high
reliability, which respectively are the key properties of FEC
codes and an ARQ system [1]. Instead of discarding the
previously received signals that are detected to contain errors
as ARQ systems do, HARQ systems further enhance their
performances by combining all the received signals to decode
the transmitted message. There are two types of the enhanced
HARQ: HARQ with Chase combining (HARQ-CC) [2] and
HARQ with incremental redundancy (HARQ-IR) [1].
HARQ-CC works as follows. First, the transmitter sends
a message that is coded by both an error-detecting code
and a FEC code. Then, the receiver decodes the message
and detects any error by using the error-detecting code. If
an error is detected, the receiver requests the transmitter to
Manuscript received September 25, 2007; revised December 31, 2007 and
March 25, 2008; accepted May 4, 2008. The associate editor coordinating the
review of this paper and approving it for publication was H. Dai.
The material in this paper was presented in part at the IEEE International
Symposium on Information Theory, Nice, France, June 2007.
E. W. Jang and J. M. Cioffi are with the Department of Electrical Engi-
neering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, U.S.A. (e-mail: {ej1130,
cioffi}@stanford.edu).
J. Lee and H.-L. Lou are with Marvell Semiconductor, Inc.,
5488 Marvell Ln, Santa Clara, CA 95054, U.S.A. (e-mail: {jungwon,
lou}@stanfordalumni.org).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TWC.2009.071064
1536-1276/09$25.00 
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 8, NO.
retransmit the message using the same modulation-and-coding
scheme. Although the same signal vector is retransmitted,
time diversity differentiates the received signal vector from
the previous one. After combining the received signal vectors,
the receiver decodes the transmitted message. This procedure
repeats until no error is detected after combining all the
received signal vectors. HARQ-IR works in a similar way to
HARQ-CC except that HARQ-IR uses different modulation-
and-coding schemes for retransmissions.
HARQ is easily implemented and provides a good operating
point in the tradeoff between throughput and reliability. There-
fore, it is widely used in wireless communications systems,
including systems based on the IEEE 802.16e standard [3],
[4]. And there has recent interest on how to design combining
schemes at the receiver for HARQ systems.
Combining-scheme design for HARQ systems is closely
related with receiver design for multiple-output systems,
thereby allowing conventional receiver design to be utilized
for combining-scheme design. Conventionally, the focus of
receiver design has been to find filter coefficients that max-
imize the signal-to-noise power ratio (SNR) at the receiver.
This approach resulted in the matched filter for single-input
single-output (SISO) systems [5] and maximal-ratio combin-
ing (MRC) for single-input multiple-output (SIMO) systems
[6], [7]. With the channel knowledge at the transmitter, MRC
has been further extended to transmit-MRC for multiple-input
single-output (MISO) systems and maximal-ratio transmission
for multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems with a
single spatial stream [8]–[13]. Therefore, MRC is straightfor-
wardly extended to the combining scheme for HARQ systems
with a single spatial stream [14].
On the contrary, receiver design as well as combining-
scheme design faces two new problems for MIMO systems
with multiple spatial streams, especially when the channel
knowledge is not available to the transmitter. The first problem
is the presence of interference, which results from multi-
ple spatial streams interfering with each other. The second
problem is the existence of multiple signal-to-interference-
and-noise power ratios (SINRs) for multiple spatial streams,
which renders the objective of receiver design unclear; it is
unclear whether to maximize the average SINR, the minimum
SINR, or the geometric SINR. To solve this multi-objective
optimization problem, a variety of design criteria as well as a
unifying framework has been proposed [15]. One approach to
overcome these problems is to design a receiver that considers
multiple spatial streams as a whole, i.e., the maximum-
c 2009 IEEE
JANG et al.: ON THE COMBINING SCHEMES FOR MIMO SYSTEMS WITH HYBRID ARQ
likelihood (ML) receiver, but extending the ML receiver to
the combining scheme for MIMO systems with HARQ results
in exponentially increasing complexity with the number of
transmissions. Another approach is to design a receiver that
renders a MIMO system into multiple SISO systems, and
then maximizes the SNRs or the SINRs individually for
each stream, respectively resulting in the zero-forcing (ZF)
receiver or the minimum mean-squared error (MMSE) receiver
[16]. Extending these linear receivers for combining schemes
are proposed in [17]. However, since linear equalizers have
suboptimal decoding performances, these combining schemes
also have suboptimal decoding performances.
This paper proposes to design combining schemes for
MIMO systems with HARQ in a fundamentally different way.
Instead of utilizing a receive filter that is designed to maximize
the SINRs, this paper suggests to design a combining scheme
so that it would directly optimize the parameter most-closely
related to the decoding performance, i.e., the log-likelihood ra-
tio (LLR), a widely-used soft-bit information metric. Then the
decoding performances of combining schemes are analyzed
by comparing the LLR values. In addition to the decoding
performance analysis, this paper further analyzes combining
schemes based on scalability and memory requirement, be-
cause it is crucial for combining schemes to operate well
regardless of the number of transmissions.
This paper is organized as follows. Section II describes
the system model. Section III proposes several combining
schemes for MIMO systems with HARQ. Then Section IV
analyzes the combining schemes in terms of decoding per-
formance, scalability, and memory requirement. By computer
simulations, Section V shows and compares the decoding
performances of the proposed combining schemes. Finally,
Section VI provides the conclusion and remarks.
II. S YSTEM M ODEL
Consider a MIMO system that employs Nt transmit an-
tennas and Nr receive antennas, thereby using Nt spatial
streams. If N transmissions has occurred for the same transmit
message, then the relationship between the transmitted signal
vector and the received signal vector at the ith transmission
is,
yi = Hi xi + ni , i = 1, · · · , N,
where yi , Hi , and xi respectively denote the Nr × 1 received
signal vector, the Nr ×Nt channel matrix, and the Nt ×1 trans-
mitted signal vector. For HARQ-CC, xi = x for all i, whereas,
for HARQ-IR, xi may be different for each i. ni denotes the
Nr ×1 additive white Gaussian noise vector at time i. Without
loss of generality, by appropriately scaling each noise variance,
all ni are assumed to be i.i.d. and zero-mean circularly-
symmetric complex Gaussian (ZMCSCG) with covariance INr
[16]. Hence the conditional probability distribution function
P r{yi |Hi , xi } is given by,
1   received signal vector and take a summation over the mul-
P r{yi |Hi , xi } = Nr exp −yi − Hi xi 2 . (2)
π tiplications. The use of the Hermitians of channel matrices
The system model uses M -QAM modulation with M =
2m . The transmit bit sequence is b ∈ {0, 1}mNt , a part
of encoder output that are interleaved later. Because of the
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837
interleaver, the individual bits of the sequence b are indepen-
dent of each other. These bits are demultiplexed across Nt
transmit antennas, then modulated to x, and finally sent at the
transmitter.
III. C OMBINING S CHEMES
This section describes three combining schemes, assuming
the use of HARQ-CC systems. Nonetheless, the first two
combining schemes can be used for HARQ-IR systems under
certain circumstances, and the last combining scheme is fully
applicable to HARQ-IR systems.
For expositional simplicity, this section shows how the
combining schemes calculates LLR only for ML decoding.
This ML decoding complexity can be reduced by employing
an efficient method [18] or by straightforwardly extending the
combining schemes for ZF or MMSE decoding.
A. The Distance-Level Combining Scheme
When multiple transmissions occur for a single transmit
signal vector, multiple received signal vectors are available at
the receiver. One way to combine these received signal vectors
is to concatenate them and then employ a big ML decoder.
In other words, when the number of transmissions is N , this
scheme calculates the LLR of bλ , the λth bit element of b,
for λ = 1, · · · , mNt as follows,
P r{bλ = 1|y1 , · · · , yN , H1 , · · · , HN }
LLRDLC = ln (3)
P r{bλ = 0|y1 , · · · , yN , H1 , · · · , HN }
   
(1) exp
x̂(1) ∈Xλ
− N i=1 yi − Hi x̂
(1) 2

= ln    ,
N (0) 2
(0) exp − y i − H i x̂ 
(0)
x̂ ∈X λ
i=1
(4)
(j)
where Xλ denotes a subset of a multi-dimensional signal
constellation set, whose λth bit is equal to j for j = 0, 1.
This scheme is implemented as follows. After the (N −
1)th transmission, the receiver stores the Euclidean distances
for all the possible transmit-signal-vector estimates x̂. When
the N th transmission occurs, the receiver calculates the new
Euclidean distance yN −HN x̂2 for each estimate x̂ and then
adds the distance to the stored distance that corresponds to the
same estimate. Finally, the receiver calculates the LLR values
(1)
with the updated distances by using (4). Since this scheme
combines the Euclidean distances for each transmitted-signal-
vector estimate, this scheme is denoted as the distance-level
combining (DLC) scheme.
B. The Maximal-Ratio Combining Scheme
The DLC scheme combines the information from multiple
transmissions at the distance level. The information can be also
combined at other levels instead, e.g., at the symbol level. One
way to perform combining at the symbol level is to multiply
the Hermitian of a channel matrix with the corresponding
and the summation is not straightforwardly justified, because
the elements of these matrices are not found to maximize
the SNRs like the coefficients of traditional MRC schemes
838 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 8, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2009

are. Nonetheless, because of the structural similarity, this The BLC scheme is implemented as follows. After the (N −
combining scheme is denoted as the maximal-ratio combining 1)th transmission, the receiver stores the sum of LLR values
(MRC) scheme. individually calculated from multiple transmissions for each
When N transmissions occur, this MRC scheme starts by bit. When the N th transmission occurs, the receiver calculates
performing the following operation. new LLR values using only yN and HN , and then adds those
N
 LLR values without any weighting to the corresponding stored
ỹN = Hi∗ yi (5) LLR sums to calculate the final LLR values.
i=1 In contrast to the other combining schemes, the BLC
= H̃N x + ñN , (6) scheme can be used not only for HARQ-CC systems but
N ∗
also for many practical HARQ-IR systems that use a low-
where H̃N = i=1 Hi Hi
with size Nt × Nt , and ñN = rate mother code and different puncturing patterns to vary the
N
H
i=1 i i
∗
n with size N t × 1. Since E[ñN ñ∗N ] = H̃N , the code rate. This is because, when bλ is punctured and not sent
1
MRC scheme then whitens the noise by multiplying by H̃ − 2 , at the ith transmission, the BLC scheme simply sets the ith
1 1 1
where A 2 is defined as any matrix such that A 2 A 2 = A. As LLR value in (12) equal to 0, making the final LLR value
a result, the input-output relationship is independent of both yi and Hi . This aligns well with the fact
−1 that both yi and Hi have no information regarding bλ .
yN = H̃N 2 ỹN (7)
1
= H̃N x + nN ,
2
(8)
with E[nN n∗
N]= INt . IV. A NALYSES ON THE C OMBINING S CHEMES
Finally, with this relationship, the MRC scheme calculates
the LLR of bλ , the λth bit element of b, for λ = 1, · · · , mNt This section analyzes the combining schemes based on the
as follows. three key design factors: decoding performance, scalability,
P r{bλ = 1|yN , H̃N2 }
1
and memory requirement.
LLRMRC = ln 1 (9)
P r{bλ = 0|yN , H̃N2 }
  1

(1) exp
x̂(1) ∈Xλ
−yN − H̃N2 x̂(1) 2 A. Decoding Performance
= ln   1
,
 − H̃ 2 x̂(0) 2
(0) exp −y The DLC scheme is essentially a big ML decoder, fully
(0)
x̂ ∈X λ
N N
(10) using all the relevant information, i.e., yi and Hi for all
(j) i = 1, · · · , N . Therefore, the DLC scheme has the optimal
where Xλ denotes a subset of the multi-dimensional signal decoding performance, and the LLR values calculated by the
constellation set, whose λth bit is equal to j for j = 0, 1. DLC scheme are respectively the optimal LLR values of bλ
The MRC scheme is implemented as follows. After the for λ = 1, · · · , mNt .
(N − 1)th transmission, the receiver stores the combined re-
However, implementing the DLC scheme using (4) imposes
ceived vector ỹN −1 and the combined channel matrix H̃N −1 .
prohibitively high computational complexity because it in-
When the N th transmission occurs, the receiver updates the
volves a division, summations of exponential functions, and
combined received vector and matrix respectively with ỹN and
a logarithm operations per each LLR value. This computa-
H̃N , and then calculates the LLR values by using (10).
tional complexity  can be reduced by using the well-known
approximation log i exp ai  maxi ai on (4) at the expense
C. The Bit-Level Combining Scheme of small degradation in decoding performance. The resulting
Another way to combine information from multiple trans- LLR for bλ is,
missions is to combine them at the bit level. Given multiple

received signal vectors, the bit-level combining (BLC) scheme N
 (0) 2
first calculates the LLR values individually from each received LLRDLC  min yi − Hi x̂ 
(0)
signal vector, and then respectively adds these LLR values to x̂(0) ∈Xλ i=1
N
get the final LLR values. In other words, when the number of  (1) 2
transmissions is N , the BLC scheme calculates the LLR of − min yi − Hi x̂  . (13)
(1)
x̂(1) ∈Xλ
bλ , the λth bit element of b, for λ = 1, · · · , mNt as follows, i=1

N
 P r{bλ = 1|yi , Hi } On the other hand, the performance of the MRC scheme
LLRBLC = ln (11)
i=1
P r{bλ = 0|yi , Hi } can be analyzed by comparing with the DLC scheme. The
   comparison between the DLC scheme in (4) and the MRC
(1)
N (1) (1) exp
x̂i ∈Xλ
−yi − Hi x̂i 2 scheme in (10) yields the following theorem.
= ln   ,
i=1 (0) (0) exp −y − H i x̂
(0) 2
 Theorem 1: The MRC scheme has the optimal decoding
x̂ ∈X i i
i λ
performance.
(12)
Proof: By factoring out common terms in denominators
(j)
where Xλ denotes a subset of the multi-dimensional signal and numerators of (4) and (10), the following equality can be
constellation set, whose λth bit is equal to j for j = 0, 1. shown to hold.

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JANG et al.: ON THE COMBINING SCHEMES FOR MIMO SYSTEMS WITH HYBRID ARQ 839

modulation size, the BLC scheme ignores these neighboring

  1
 bits while taking minimum individually for each transmission.
(1) 2
x̂(1) ∈Xλ
exp −yN − H̃N x̂ 
(1)
2
Furthermore, since more constellation points are available, the
LLRMRC = ln   
(0) exp −y
1
 − H̃ 2 x̂(0) 2 BLC scheme is more likely to make mistakes while taking
(0)
x̂ ∈Xλ N N
 N minimums. This also suggests that the gap decreases as the
  SNR increases. The BLC scheme is more likely to take the
x̂(1) ∈X
(1) exp − yi − Hi x̂(1) 2 correct estimates while taking minimums for higher SNR
λ
i=1
= ln  region. These conjectures are supported by the simulation
N

 results in Section V.
x̂(0) ∈Xλ
(0) exp − yi − Hi x̂(0) 2
i=1
= LLRDLC . (14) B. Scalability
Since the number of transmissions may vary for each
This equality shows that the MRC scheme and the MRC
transmit message, it is beneficial for the system design to reuse
scheme have the same decoding performance. Since the DLC
the same decoder repeatedly, thereby attaining scalability.
scheme has the optimal decoding performance, the MRC
This scalability enables the receiver not only to reduce the
scheme also has the optimal decoding performance.
architectural complexity but also to have the flexibility to
Similarly as in the DLC scheme, the complexity of the MRC
operate regardless of the number of transmissions.
scheme can be reduced by using the approximation on (10).
First, the DLC scheme is scalable because it performs the
The resulting LLR for bλ is,
same operation after each transmission. After the N th trans-
1
LLRMRC  min yN − H̃N2 x̂(0) 2 mission, the DLC scheme calculates the Euclidean distances
(0)
x̂(0) ∈Xλ using only yN and HN , adds these distances to the corre-
1 sponding stored distances to update them, and then calculates
− min yN − H̃N2 x̂(1) 2 . (15)
(1)
x̂
(1)
∈Xλ
the LLR values with the updated distances.
Second, the MRC scheme is also scalable because the
In addition to simplifying the LLR calculation, using this sizes of the combined received vector and matrix respectively
approximation further reduces the complexity of the MRC remain the same after each transmission. To calculate the LLR
scheme by removing the needs to calculate the square root values after the N th transmission, the MRC scheme uses ỹN
and the inverse of the combined channel matrix. The reason and H̃N , whose sizes are respectively Nr × 1 and Nt × Nt at
is that the ML metric in (15) is all times.
1 Finally, the BLC scheme is scalable as well because it also
yN − H̃N2 xN 2 = x∗N H̃N xN − 2{x∗N ỹN } + ỹ∗N H̃N
−1
ỹN ,
repeats the same operation after each transmission. After the
(16)
N th transmission, the BLC scheme calculates the LLR values
where ỹ∗N H̃N
−1
ỹN can be ignored because it is common to using only yN and HN , updates the stored LLR values by
both terms on the right side of (15). adding the new LLR values to the corresponding stored LLR
By using the same approximation on (12), the complexity values, and use the updated LLR values for the final LLR
of the BLC scheme can be reduced as well. The resulting LLR values.
for bλ is,
N
 C. Memory Requirement
 (0)
LLRBLC  min yi − Hi x̂i 2 Given that multiple transmissions are combined in physical
(0) (0)
i=1 x̂i ∈Xλ layer, one of the most important factors in choosing a com-

(1)
bining scheme is the memory requirement. In this analysis, a
− min yi − Hi x̂i 2 . (17) memory size required to store one real number is denoted as
(1) (1)
x̂i ∈Xλ
one memory unit. For further analysis, the dynamic range of
In addition to reducing the complexity, using this approxi- stored values for each combining scheme can be considered
mation facilitates the performance analysis. After applying the as well. This is because the number of required bits is affected
approximation, the comparison between the DLC scheme in by which values are stored by a combining scheme, e.g., the
(13) and the BLC scheme in (17) reveals that the order of Euclidean distances, the combined vector and matrix, and the
summation and minimum is interchanged; the BLC scheme LLRs.
takes multiple minimums individually for each transmission, First, the DLC scheme stores the Euclidean distances be-
whereas the minimum is taken only once after the summation tween a received signal vector and every constellation-point
in the DLC scheme. This means that the BLC scheme neglects combinations of the modulation scheme used at the transmitter.
the fact that the same transmit signal vector is repeatedly There are 2m possible constellation points per each transmitted
reused, contrary to the DLC scheme. As a result, the BLC QAM symbol. Since the number of spatial streams is Nt , the
scheme has a suboptimal decoding performance. total memory required by the DLC scheme is 2mNt units per
On the other hand, this implies that the performance gap Nt QAM symbols transmitted.
increases with the use of larger modulation size. Although Second, the MRC scheme stores the combined received
there are more neighboring bits that respectively remain signal vector and matrix. To store the combined received signal
the same throughout multiple transmissions with the larger vector, 2Nt units are required because the elements of the

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840 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 8, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2009

TABLE I 4−QAM with rc = 1/2 for 3GPP−II 4−QAM with rc = 1/2 for 3GPP−III
M EMORY REQUIREMENTS OF THE COMBINING SCHEMES 0
10
0
10

Combining Scheme DLC MRC BLC

Memory Unit 2mNt Nt (Nt + 2) mNt −1 −1
10 10

−2 −2
10 10
data bits + tail bits convolutional
puncture append
encoder

PER

PER
bits bits
r = 1/2

r = 1/2, 2/3, 3/4, 5/6 −3 ML−DLC −3 ML−DLC

10 MRC−ML 10 MRC−ML
ML−BLC ML−BLC
ML ML
−4
ZF−DLC −4
ZF−DLC
subcarrier 10 MRC−ZF 10 MRC−ZF
QAM
interleaver assignment & ZF−BLC ZF−BLC
coded bits modulator
spatial mapping
ZF−MRC ZF−MRC
ZF ZF

Fig. 1. Block diagram of IEEE 802.16e system 5 10 15 20 0 5 10 15

SNR (dB) SNR (dB)

Fig. 2. The packet-eror rates for 4-QAM with code rate 1/2 for 3GPP UMTS
vector are complex numbers. To store the combined channel case II and III.
matrix, Nt + (Nt − 1)Nt units are required because the matrix
is conjugate symmetric and has real numbers on the diagonal 0
16−QAM with rc = 3/4 for 3GPP−II
0
16−QAM with rc = 3/4 for 3GPP−III
10 10
and complex numbers on the rest. Therefore, the total memory
required by the MRC scheme is Nt (Nt +2) units per Nt QAM
symbols transmitted. −1
10
−1
10
Finally, the BLC scheme stores the LLR value for each
coded bit. Thus it requires 1 unit per coded bit or m units per
each QAM symbol transmitted. Since the number of spatial −2
10
−2
10
streams is Nt , the total memory required by the BLC scheme
PER

PER
is mNt units per Nt QAM symbols transmitted.
ML−DLC ML−DLC
Table I summarizes the memory requirements of the com- −3
10 MRC−ML
−3
10 MRC−ML
bining schemes, and shows that the memory requirement ML−BLC ML−BLC
ML ML
depends on the modulation size used at the transmitter and ZF−DLC ZF−DLC
−4 −4
the number of spatial streams. In practice, the memory re- 10 MRC−ZF 10 MRC−ZF
ZF−BLC ZF−BLC
quirement also depends on the transmit packet size. However, ZF−MRC ZF−MRC
since the bandwidth is a precious resource, most wireless ZF ZF
communications systems limit the maximum packet size. 10 15 20 25 10 15 20 25
Besides, the number of transmit antennas used at such systems SNR (dB) SNR (dB)

limits the maximum number of spatial streams. Thus the
combining schemes for MIMO systems with HARQ should
be able to store the information of a transmitted packet for
the maximum packet size and for the maximum number of
spatial streams, regardless of the modulation size. Therefore,
it is fair to compare the memory requirements of different
combining schemes for the worst case given the maximum
packet size and the maximum number of streams. Table I
suggests that although the BLC scheme requires the least
amount of memory for 4-QAM, the MRC scheme requires
the least memory for 64-QAM. As a result, for many wireless
communications systems that have 64-QAM as the largest
modulation size, such as IEEE 802.11n and IEEE 802.16e,
the MRC scheme is the most preferable scheme in terms of
memory requirement.
V. S IMULATION R ESULTS
This section provides simulation results to compare the
decoding performances of the combining schemes under the
IEEE 802.16e system setting. A block diagram of an IEEE
802.16e system is shown in Fig. 1.
Fig. 3. The packet-error rates for 16-QAM with code rate 3/4 for 3GPP
UMTS case II and III.
The number of transmit antennas Nt and the number
of receive antennas Nr are both set to 2. The number of
subcarriers is 1024, and the full-usage of subcarriers mode
is assumed. One packet consists of multiple coded blocks,
each spanning 3 orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing
(OFDM) symbol times, while the duration of one OFDM
symbol is equal to 102.85μs. Each OFDM symbol consists
of 16 subchannels, and each subchannel has 48 subcarriers in
it. The carrier frequency, the sampling rate, and the subcarrier
spacing are 2.5GHz, 11.2MHz, and 10.9375kHz, respectively.
The channel models used for the simulations are the 3GPP
UMTS case II with mobile speed 60km/h and the case III
with mobile speed 3km/h [22].
Figures 2, 3, and 4 respectively show the packet-error
rate (PER) versus the SNR when the modulation scheme
is 4-QAM with coding rate r = 12 , when the modulation
scheme is 16-QAM with coding rate r = 34 , and when the
modulation scheme is 64-QAM with coding rate r = 34 . In

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JANG et al.: ON THE COMBINING SCHEMES FOR MIMO SYSTEMS WITH HYBRID ARQ 841

64−QAM with rc = 3/4 for 3GPP−II 64−QAM with rc = 3/4 for 3GPP−III
0
10
0
10
to have the optimal decoding performance, which is used to
analyze the decoding performances of the other combining
schemes. It is also shown to be a scalable combining scheme.
−1
10
−1
10 However, it suffers from high computational complexity and
memory requirement that increases with the modulation size
used at the transmitter. Second, the MRC scheme is shown
−2
10
−2
10 to achieve the optimal decoding performance as well by
comparing the LLR values with those of the DLC scheme.
PER

PER
ML−DLC
−3 −3
10 MRC−ML 10
ML−BLC
ML
−4
ZF−DLC −4
10 MRC−ZF 10
ZF−BLC
ZF−MRC
ZF
15 20 25 30 15
SNR (dB)
Fig. 4. The packet-error rates for 64-QAM with code rate 3/4 for 3GPP
UMTS case II and III.
the figures, the ML scheme and the ZF scheme denote the
case when only one transmission occurs. In all other cases, the
number of transmissions is equal to 2, and the received signal
vectors are combined accordingly as described in Section
III. Additionally, ZF-MRC denotes a receiver scheme that
performs ZF followed by MRC, which is a post-equalization
combining scheme described in [23].
The figures show that the PER significantly decreases by
combining two received signal vectors. Moreover, the ML-
DLC scheme and the MRC-ML scheme achieve the best
decoding performance while the ML-BLC scheme has an
inferior decoding performance. This is in accordance with
the mathematical analysis in Section IV, which proved the
optimality of the DLC scheme and the MRC scheme, and the
suboptimality of the BLC scheme.
The figures also show that the performance gap between
the MRC-ML scheme and the ML-BLC scheme is small for
the 4-QAM case but becomes larger for the 16-QAM case
and the 64-QAM case. This agrees with the conjecture in
Section IV that the larger the modulation size is, the wider
the performance gap of the BLC scheme becomes. On the
other hand, the figures show that the performance gap is much
wider for the ZF case, i.e., between the MRC-ZF scheme
and the ZF-BLC scheme. This suggests that using ZF, which
ignores the noise correlation, for combining schemes results
in the significant loss of information. This observation is also
supported by the fact that the performance gap between the
ZF-BLC scheme and the ZF-MRC scheme is nominal.
VI. C ONCLUSION AND R EMARKS
This paper suggested to design combining schemes for
MIMO HARQ systems with the objective of directly optimiz-
ing the LLR values, instead of maximizing the SINRs. This
approach resulted in the following three combining schemes:
the DLC scheme, the MRC scheme, and the BLC scheme.
This paper then analyzed the combining schemes based on
the three key design factors: decoding performance, scalability,
and memory requirement. First, the DLC scheme is shown
Additionally, the MRC scheme is shown to be scalable and
ML−DLC
require only small memory size. Finally, the BLC scheme is
MRC−ML
ML−BLC shown to have a suboptimal decoding performance by compar-
ML
ZF−DLC ing the LLR values with those of the DLC scheme, which was
MRC−ZF facilitated by using the approximation. Nonetheless, the BLC
ZF−BLC
ZF−MRC scheme is shown to be scalable as well and require relatively
ZF small memory size.
20 25 30 As a result, based on the three key design factors, the MRC
SNR (dB)
scheme is the most preferable combining scheme for MIMO
systems with HARQ-CC. The fact that the MRC scheme for
multiple streams achieves the optimal decoding performance
is indeed a rather striking result. This is because, although
the scheme is named MRC due to the structural similarity,
this MRC scheme for multiple streams does not share the
objective of traditional MRC for a single stream. And, to the
best knowledge of the authors, the use of this MRC scheme for
multiple streams has not been attempted in any other papers.
For MIMO systems with HARQ-IR, however, the preferable
receiver scheme is the BLC scheme even though it has a
suboptimal decoding performance. This is because the DLC
scheme and the MRC scheme can be used only if there are
common transmit vectors throughout multiple transmissions,
whereas the BLC scheme is free of such limitation. Using the
other combining schemes in conjunction with the BLC scheme
is possible but at the expenses of the receiver complexity
and the required memory size. In order to further optimize
the performance of an HARQ-IR system, the problem of
the reliability difference among bits should be considered in
addition to the problem of combining-scheme design. The
reliability difference among bits might be caused by the
variation in the number of transmissions that include each bit
or the inherent reliability bias of the signal constellation used
at the transmitter.
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Edward W. Jang [S’04] received his B.S. degree in
electrical engineering from Seoul National Univer-
sity, Korea, in 2002, and his M.S. degree in electrical
engineering from Stanford University, Stanford, CA,
in 2004. He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. degree
at Stanford University. His research interests include
transmission schemes for systems with a limited
feedback rate and for MIMO systems with hybrid
ARQ.
Authorized licensed use limited to: VELLORE INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY. Downloaded on July 28, 2009 at 06:50 from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
Jungwon Lee [S’00, M’05] received his BS de-
gree in Electrical Engineering from Seoul National
University in 1999, and he received his M.S. and
Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Stan-
ford University in 2001 and 2005, respectively. From
2000 to 2003, he worked as an intern for National
Semiconductor, Telcordia Technologies, and AT&T
Shannon Labs Research and as a consultant for
Ikanos Communications. Since 2003, he has worked
for Marvell Semiconductor Inc., Santa Clara, Cali-
fornia, where he is now a Senior Manager/Principal
Engineer leading algorithm development and system architecture design for
the next generation wireless communication network. His research interests lie
in wireless and wireline communication theory with emphasis on multi-input
multi-output (MIMO) orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM)
system design.
Hui-Ling Lou is a Senior Engineering Director at
Marvell Semiconductor in Santa Clara, California,
leading teams responsible for the physical layer
(PHY) standards, systems, and architecture design
and development for the mobile WiMax chip sets,
and for investigating next generation wireless tech-
nologies. She has also formed teams, practically
from ground up, that were responsible for the PHY
standards and systems design for Marvell’s first
IEEE 802.11n MIMO, Bluetooth and digital FM
chip sets. Prior to Marvell, Dr. Lou spent nine years
at Bell Laboratories Research in Murray Hill, New Jersey where she per-
formed applied systems research and development for wireless communication
systems, including designing the IS-95 CDMA chip sets, investigating joint
source-channel coding schemes for efficient multimedia transmission over
wireless networks, defining the PHY systems for both the satellite and
terrestrial digital radio broadcasting systems that are currently deployed in the
United States. In 1992, Dr. Lou was a Consultant at Amati Communications
where she developed a reconfigurable trellis codec chip for the ADSL systems.
Dr. Lou completed her MSEE and PhD degrees at Stanford University in
1988 and 1992, respectively. She has more than sixty patents granted and
pending, and is a co-inventor of a patent portfolio that has generated a
cumulative royalty of more than $5 million. She has also published more
than fifty peer-reviewed publications. Dr. Lou is an Associate Editor of
the IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON B ROADCASTING. Her interest is in applied
systems research using rigorous theoretical grounding to innovate and design
cutting-edge digital communication systems.
John M. Cioffi - BSEE, 1978, Illinois; PhDEE,
1984, Stanford; Bell Laboratories, 1978-1984; IBM
Research, 1984-1986; EE Prof., Stanford, 1986-
present. Cioffi founded Amati Com. Corp in 1991
(purchased by TI in 1997) and was officer/director
from 1991-1997. He currently is on the Board of
Directors of ASSIA (Chairman), ClariPhy, Teranet-
ics, Vector Silicon Inc., and the Marconi Foundation.
He is on the advisory boards of Focus Ventures,
Quantenna, and Amicus. Cioffi’s specific interests
are in the area of high-performance digital trans-
mission. Various Awards: International Marconi Fellow (2006), Holder of
Hitachi America Professorship in Electrical Engineering at Stanford (2002);
Member, National Academy of Engineering (2001); IEEE Kobayashi Medal
(2001); IEEE Millennium Medal (2000); IEEE Fellow (1996); IEE JJ Tomson
Medal (2000); 1999 U. of Illinois Outstanding Alumnus, 1991 and 2007
IEEE C OMMUNICATIONS M AGAZINE best paper; 1995 ANSI T1 Outstand-
ing Achievement Award; NSF Presidential Investigator (1987-1992), ISSLS
2004, ICC 2006, 2007, and 2008 Conference Best-Paper awards. Cioffi has
published over 250 papers and holds over 80 patents, of which many are
heavily licensed including key necessary patents for the international standards
in ADSL, VDSL, DSM, and WiMAX.