Integer-Forcing Receiver with Practical Binary Codes and Its Performance Analysis

A new practical coding scheme for integer- forcing (IF) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO)systems is proposed. In order to utilize practical binary codes for IF, the proposed scheme is based on multilevel coding, in which multilevel encoding composed of binary linear codes is employed at the transmitter and multistage decoding suitably adapted to the IF operation is employed at the receiver. The performance of the proposed scheme is evaluated both analytically and numerically, showing that the gain of IF over conventional receivers is indeed achievable with practical binary codes. Specifically, it is shown that the proposed IF receiver can significantly outperform conventional linear receivers especially when the channel correlation is severe and/or target spectral efficiency is high.