Permutation codes: Achieving the diversity-multiplexing tradeoff

This paper considers reliable communication over a parallel (correlated) fading channel for short periods of time. We derive a code design criterion by taking a compound channel viewpoint of the outage capacity of the channel. Motivated by the criterion, we show existence of simple codes that achieve the optimal diversity-multiplexing tradeoff curve, introduced recently in, simultaneously for every correlated parallel channel. We demonstrate a code with simple encoding and decoding for a parallel channel with two diversity branches. The codes for the parallel channel can be used on a correlated MIMO channel by using the DBLAST architecture to simultaneously achieve the diversity-multiplexing tradeoff curve for arbitrary fading channels.