We derive bounds on the noncoherent capacity of wide-sense stationary uncorrelated scattering (WSSUS) channels that are selective both in time and frequency, and are underspread, i.e., the product of the channel's delay spread and Doppler spread is small. For input signals that are peak constrained in time and frequency, we obtain upper and lower bounds on capacity that are explicit in the channel's scattering function, are accurate for a large range of bandwidth and allow to coarsely identify the capacity-optimal bandwidth as a function of the peak power and the channel's scattering function. We also obtain a closed-form expression for the first-order Taylor series expansion of capacity in the limit of large bandwidth, and show that our bounds are tight in the wideband regime. For input signals that are peak constrained in time only (and, hence, allowed to be peaky in frequency), we provide upper and lower bounds on the infinite-bandwidth capacity and find cases when the bounds coincide and the infinite-bandwidth capacity is characterized exactly. Our lower bound is closely related to a result by Viterbi (1967).
The analysis in this paper is based on a discrete-time discrete-frequency approximation of WSSUS time- and frequency-selective channels. This discretization explicitly takes into account the underspread property, which is satisfied by virtually all wireless communication channels.
We characterize the capacity of the general class of noncoherent underspread wide-sense stationary uncorrelated scattering (WSSUS) time-frequency-selective Rayleigh fading channels, under peak constraints in time and frequency and in time only. Capacity upper and lower bounds are found which are explicit in the channel's scattering function and allow to identify the capacity-maximizing bandwidth for a given scattering function and a given peak-to-average power ratio.
Communication channels are said to be underspread if their coherence time is greater than their delay spread. In such cases it can be shown that in the infinite bandwidth limit the information capacity tends to that of a channel with perfect receiver Channel State Information (CSI). This paper presents a lower bound on the capacity of a channel with finite bandwidth, expressed in a form which is mathematically elegant, and computationally simple. The bounding method exploits the fact that most actual channels are highly underspread; and that typically more is known about their impulse response…
The analysis of the channel capacity in the absence of prior channel knowledge (noncoherent channel) has gained increasing interest in recent years, but it is still unknown for the general case. In this paper we derive bounds on the capacity of the noncoherent, underspread complex Gaussian, orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), wide sense stationary channel with uncorrelated scattering (WSSUS), under a peak power constraint or a constraint on the second and fourth moments of the transmitted signal. These bounds are characterized only by the system signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and b…
We introduce a novel blind (noncoherent) communication scheme, called modulation on conjugate-reciprocal zeros (MOCZ), to reliably transmit short binary packets over unknown finite impulse response systems as used, for example, to model underspread wireless multipath channels. In MOCZ, the information is modulated onto the zeros of the transmitted signals $z-$transform. In the absence of additive noise, the zero structure of the signal is perfectly preserved at the receiver, no matter what the channel impulse response (CIR) is. Furthermore, by a proper selection of the zeros, we show that MOCZ…
The noncoherent capacity of stationary discrete-time fading channels is known to be very sensitive to the fine details of the channel model. More specifically, the measure of the set of harmonics where the power spectral density of the fading process is nonzero determines if capacity grows logarithmically in SNR or slower than logarithmically. An engineering-relevant problem is to characterize the SNR value at which this sensitivity starts to matter. In this paper, we consider the general class of continuous-time Rayleigh-fading channels that satisfy the wide-sense stationary uncorrelated-scat…
The high-SNR capacity of the noncoherent MIMO channel has been derived for the case of independent and identically distributed (IID) Rayleigh block fading by exploiting the Gaussianity of the channel matrix. This implies the optimal degrees of freedom (DoF), i.e., the capacity pre-log factor. Nevertheless, as far as the optimal DoF is concerned, IID Rayleigh fading is apparently a sufficient but not necessary condition. In this paper, we show that the optimal DoF for the IID Rayleigh block fading channel is also the optimal DoF for a more general class of generic block fading channels, in whic…
The capacity of noncoherent fading relay channels is studied where all terminals are aware of the fading statistics but not of their realizations. It is shown that if the fading coefficient of the channel between the transmitter and the receiver can be predicted more accurately from its infinite past than the fading coefficient of the channel between the relay and the receiver, then at high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) the relay does not increase capacity. It is further shown that if the fading coefficient of the channel between the transmitter and the relay can be predicted more accurately fro…
The noncoherent capacity of stationary discrete-time fading channels is known to be very sensitive to the fine details of the channel model. More specifically, the measure of the support of the fading-process power spectral density (PSD) determines if noncoherent capacity grows logarithmically in SNR or slower than logarithmically. Such a result is unsatisfactory from an engineering point of view, as the support of the PSD cannot be determined through measurements. The aim of this paper is to assess whether, for general continuous-time Rayleigh-fading channels, this sensitivity has a noticeabl…
In this paper, random coding error exponents and cutoff rate are studied for noncoherent Rician fading channels, where neither the receiver nor the transmitter has channel side information. First, it is assumed that the input is subject only to an average power constraint. In this case, a lower bound to the random coding error exponent is considered and the optimal input achieving this lower bound is shown to have a discrete amplitude and uniform phase. If the input is subject to both average and peak power constraints, it is proven that the optimal input achieving the random coding error expo…
The memoryless noncoherent single-input single-output (SISO) Rayleigh-fading channel is considered. Closed-form expressions for the mutual information between the output and the input of this channel when the input magnitude distribution is discrete and restricted to having two mass points are derived, and it is subsequently shown how these expressions can be used to obtain closed-form expressions for the capacity of this channel for signal to noise ratio (SNR) values of up to approximately 0 dB, and a tight capacity lower bound for SNR values between 0 dB and 10 dB. The expressions for the ch…
Discrete-time Rayleigh fading single-input single-output (SISO) and multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channels are considered, with no channel state information at the transmitter or the receiver. The fading is assumed to be stationary and correlated in time, but independent from antenna to antenna. Peak-power and average-power constraints are imposed on the transmit antennas. For MIMO channels, these constraints are either imposed on the sum over antennas, or on each individual antenna. For SISO channels and MIMO channels with sum power constraints, the asymptotic capacity as the peak sig…
Transmission of information over a discrete-time memoryless Rician fading channel is considered where neither the receiver nor the transmitter knows the fading coefficients. The spectral-efficiency/bit-energy tradeoff in the low-power regime is examined when the input has limited peakedness. It is shown that if a fourth moment input constraint is imposed or the input peak-to-average power ratio is limited, then in contrast to the behavior observed in average power limited channels, the minimum bit energy is not always achieved at zero spectral efficiency. The low-power performance is also char…
We derive a lower bound on the capacity pre-log of a temporally correlated Rayleigh block-fading multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channel with T transmit antennas and R receive antennas in the noncoherent setting (no a priori channel knowledge at the transmitter and the receiver). In this model, the fading process changes independently across blocks of length L and is temporally correlated within each block for each transmit-receive antenna pair, with a given rank Q of the corresponding correlation matrix. Our result implies that for almost all choices of the coloring matrix that models t…
We study the high-SNR capacity of MIMO Rayleigh block-fading channels in the noncoherent setting where neither transmitter nor receiver has a priori channel state information. We show that when the number of receive antennas is sufficiently large and the temporal correlation within each block is "generic" (in the sense used in the interference-alignment literature), the capacity pre-log is given by T(1-1/N) for T<N, where T denotes the number of transmit antennas and N denotes the block length. A comparison with the widely used constant block-fading channel (where the fading is constant within…
Transmission of information over a discrete-time memoryless Rician fading channel is considered where neither the receiver nor the transmitter knows the fading coefficients. First the structure of the capacity-achieving input signals is investigated when the input is constrained to have limited peakedness by imposing either a fourth moment or a peak constraint. When the input is subject to second and fourth moment limitations, it is shown that the capacity-achieving input amplitude distribution is discrete with a finite number of mass points in the low-power regime. A similar discrete structur…
We present nonasymptotic upper and lower bounds on the maximum coding rate achievable when transmitting short packets over a Rician memoryless block-fading channel for a given requirement on the packet error probability. We focus on the practically relevant scenario in which there is no \emph{a priori} channel state information available at the transmitter and at the receiver. An upper bound built upon the min-max converse is compared to two lower bounds: the first one relies on a noncoherent transmission strategy in which the fading channel is not estimated explicitly at the receiver; the sec…
We analyze the capacity of a continuous-time, time-selective, Rayleigh block-fading channel in the high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regime. The fading process is assumed stationary within each block and to change independently from block to block; furthermore, its realizations are not known a priori to the transmitter and the receiver (noncoherent setting). A common approach to analyzing the capacity of this channel is to assume that the receiver performs matched filtering followed by sampling at symbol rate (symbol matched filtering). This yields a discrete-time channel in which each transmit…
We study the generalized degrees of freedom (gDoF) of the block-fading noncoherent 2-user interference channel (IC) with a coherence time of T symbol durations and symmetric fading statistics. We demonstrate that a natural training-based scheme for the noncoherent IC, is suboptimal in several regimes. We study and analyze several alternate schemes: the first is a new noncoherent scheme using rate-splitting. We also consider a scheme that treats interference-as-noise (TIN) and a time division multiplexing (TDM) scheme. We show that a standard training-based scheme for the noncoherent IC is outp…
Reliable communication over the discrete-input/continuous-output noncoherent multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) Rayleigh block fading channel is considered when the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) per degree of freedom is low. Two key problems are posed and solved to obtain the optimum discrete input. In both problems, the average and peak power per space-time slot of the input constellation are constrained. In the first one, the peak power to average power ratio (PPAPR) of the input constellation is held fixed, while in the second problem, the peak power is fixed independently of the average p…
We establish an upper bound on the noncoherent capacity pre-log of temporally correlated block-fading single-input multiple-output (SIMO) channels. The upper bound matches the lower bound recently reported in Riegler et al. (2011), and, hence, yields a complete characterization of the SIMO noncoherent capacity pre-log, provided that the channel covariance matrix satisfies a mild technical condition. This result allows one to determine the optimal number of receive antennas to be used to maximize the capacity pre-log for a given block-length and a given rank of the channel covariance matrix.
We consider general multi-antenna fading channels with coarsely quantized outputs, where the channel is unknown to the transmitter and receiver. This analysis is of interest in the context of sensor network communication where low power and low cost are key requirements (e.g. standard IEEE 802.15.4 applications). This is also motivated by highly energy constrained communications devices where sampling the signal may be more energy consuming than processing or transmitting it. Therefore the analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) for such applications should be low-resolution, in order to reduce th…
An uplink system with a single antenna transmitter and a single receiver with a large number of antennas is considered. We propose an energy-detection-based single-shot noncoherent communication scheme which does not use the instantaneous channel state information (CSI), but rather only the knowledge of the channel statistics. The suggested system uses a transmitter that modulates information on the power of the symbols, and a receiver which measures only the average energy across the antennas. We propose constellation designs which are asymptotically optimal with respect to symbol error rate …
A noncoherent two-way relaying system is developed using physical-layer network coding for improved throughput over conventional relaying in a fading channel. Energy-efficient noncoherent operation is achieved using multitone frequency shift keying (FSK). A novel soft-output demodulator is developed for the relay, and corresponding achievable exchange rates are found for Rayleigh fading and AWGN channels. Bit-error rate performance approaching the achievable rate is realized using a capacity-approaching channel code and a receiver architecture that iterates between demodulation and channel dec…
This paper considers the problem of reliable communication over discrete-time channels whose impulse responses have length $L$ and exactly $S\leq L$ non-zero coefficients, and whose support and coefficients remain fixed over blocks of $N>L$ channel uses but change independently from block to block. Here, it is assumed that the channel's support and coefficient realizations are both unknown, although their statistics are known. Assuming Gaussian non-zero-coefficients and noise, and focusing on the high-SNR regime, it is first shown that the ergodic noncoherent channel capacity has pre-log facto…
This paper, mostly tutorial in nature, deals with the problem of characterizing the capacity of fading channels in the high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regime. We focus on the practically relevant noncoherent setting, where neither transmitter nor receiver know the channel realizations, but both are aware of the channel law. We present, in an intuitive and accessible form, two tools, first proposed by Lapidoth & Moser (2003), of fundamental importance to high-SNR capacity analysis: the duality approach and the escape-to-infinity property of capacity-achieving distributions. Furthermore, we app…
The goal of this paper is to obtain a better knowledge of the achievable data rate over noncoherent Rician fading channel with time and frequency memory. We assume that the average-power as well as the peak-power of the input signal are finite and the peak-power limitation is applied in the time domain. Expression for this rate is based on a lower bound on mutual information that assume independent and identically distributed input data symbols. The lower bound is expressed as a difference of two terms. The first term is the information rate of the coherent channel with a weighted signal-to-no…
We study the generalized degrees of freedom (gDoF) of the block-fading noncoherent diamond (parallel relay) wireless network with asymmetric distributions of link strengths, and a coherence time of T symbol duration. We first derive an outer bound for this channel and then derive the optimal signaling structure for this outer bound. Using the optimal signaling structure we solve the outer bound optimization problem in terms of its gDoF. Using insights from our outer bound signaling solution, we devise an achievability strategy based on a novel scheme that we call train-scale quantize-map-forwa…
A new approach toward the noncoherent communications over the time varying fading channels is presented. In this approach, the relationship between the input signal space and the output signal space of a correlatively changing fading channel is shown to be a nonlinear mapping between manifolds of different dimensions. Studying this mapping, it is shown that using nonlinear decoding algorithms for single input-multiple output (SIMO) and multiple input multiple output (MIMO) systems, extra numbers of degrees of freedom (DOF) are available. We call them the nonlinear degrees of freedom.
We study channel capacity when a one-bit quantizer is employed at the output of the discrete-time average-power-limited Rayleigh-fading channel. We focus on the low signal-to-noise ratio regime, where communication at very low spectral efficiencies takes place, as in Spread Spectrum and Ultra-Wideband communications. We demonstrate that, in this regime, the best one-bit quantizer does not reduce the asymptotic capacity of the coherent channel, but it does reduce that of the noncoherent channel.
This work considers optimizing LDPC codes in the physical-layer network coded two-way relay channel using noncoherent FSK modulation. The error-rate performance of channel decoding at the relay node during the multiple-access phase was improved through EXIT-based optimization of Tanner graph variable node degree distributions. Codes drawn from the DVB-S2 and WiMAX standards were used as a basis for design and performance comparison. The computational complexity characteristics of the standard codes were preserved in the optimized codes by maintaining the extended irregular repeat-accumulate (e…
We study a noncoherent multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) fading multiple-access channel (MAC), where the transmitters and the receiver are aware of the statistics of the fading, but not of its realisation. We analyse the rate region that is achievable with nearest neighbour decoding and pilot-assisted channel estimation and determine the corresponding pre-log region, which is defined as the limiting ratio of the rate region to the logarithm of the SNR as the SNR tends to infinity.
Physical-layer network coding improves the throughput of the two-way relay channel by allowing multiple source terminals to transmit simultaneously to the relay. However, it is generally not feasible to align the phases of the multiple received signals at the relay, which motivates the exploration of noncoherent solutions. In this paper, turbo-coded orthogonal multi-tone frequency-shift keying (FSK) is considered for the two-way relay channel. In contrast with analog network coding, the system considered is an instance of digital network coding; i.e., the relay decodes the network codeword and…
In this paper, the performance of signaling strategies with high peak-to-average power ratio is analyzed in both coherent and noncoherent fading channels. Two recently proposed modulation schemes, namely on-off binary phase-shift keying and on-off quaternary phase-shift keying, are considered. For these modulation formats, the optimal decision rules used at the detector are identified and analytical expressions for the error probabilities are obtained. Numerical techniques are employed to compute the error probabilities. It is concluded that increasing the peakedness of the signals results in …
We find the capacity pre-log of a temporally correlated Rayleigh block-fading SIMO channel in the noncoherent setting. It is well known that for block-length L and rank of the channel covariance matrix equal to Q, the capacity pre-log in the SISO case is given by 1-Q/L. Here, Q/L can be interpreted as the pre-log penalty incurred by channel uncertainty. Our main result reveals that, by adding only one receive antenna, this penalty can be reduced to 1/L and can, hence, be made to vanish in the large-L limit, even if Q/L remains constant as L goes to infinity. Intuitively, even though the SISO c…
The capacity of peak-power limited, single-antenna, noncoherent, flat-fading channels with memory is considered. The emphasis is on the capacity pre-log, i.e., on the limiting ratio of channel capacity to the logarithm of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), as the SNR tends to infinity. It is shown that, among all stationary & ergodic fading processes of a given spectral distribution function and whose law has no mass point at zero, the Gaussian process gives rise to the smallest pre-log. The assumption that the law of the fading process has no mass point at zero is essential in the sense that th…
This paper studies the capacity of discrete-time multipath fading channels. It is assumed that the number of paths is finite, i.e., that the channel output is influenced by the present and by the L previous channel inputs. A noncoherent channel model is considered where neither transmitter nor receiver are cognizant of the fading's realization, but both are aware of its statistic. The focus is on capacity at high signal-to-noise ratios (SNR). In particular, the capacity pre-loglog - defined as the limiting ratio of the capacity to loglog SNR as SNR tends to infinity - is studied. It is shown t…
We consider a noncoherent wireless network, where the transmitters and receivers are cognizant of the statistics of the fading coefficients, but are ignorant of their realizations. We demonstrate that if the nodes do not cooperate, if they transmit symbols that all follow the same distribution, and if the variances of the fading coefficients decay exponentially or more slowly, then the channel capacity is bounded in the SNR. This confirms a similar result by Lozano, Heath, and Andrews.
In this paper, the performance of signaling strategies with high peak-to-average power ratio is analyzed over both coherent and noncoherent fading channels. Two modulation schemes, namely on-off phase-shift keying (OOPSK) and on-off frequency-shift keying (OOFSK), are considered. Initially, uncoded systems are analyzed. For OOPSK and OOFSK, the optimal detector structures are identified and analytical expressions for the error probabilities are obtained for arbitrary constellation sizes. Numerical techniques are employed to compute the error probabilities. It is concluded that increasing the p…
In this paper, we consider a multiuser massive single-input multiple-output (SIMO) enabled Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) communication system. To reduce the latency and overhead caused by channel estimation, we assume that only the large-scale fading coefficients are available. We employ a noncoherent maximum-likelihood (ML) detector at the receiver side which does not need the instantaneous channel state information (CSI). For such a massive SIMO system, we present a new design framework to assure that each transmitted signal matrix can be uniquely determined in the noise-free case and…
The capacity of discrete-time, noncoherent, multipath fading channels is considered. It is shown that if the variances of the path gains decay faster than exponentially, then capacity is unbounded in the transmit power.
We studynthe high-SNR capacity of generic MIMO Rayleigh block-fading channels in the noncoherent setting where neither transmitter nor receiver has a priori channel state information but both are aware of the channel statistics. In contrast to the well-established constant block-fading model, we allow the fading to vary within each block with a temporal correlation that is "generic" (in the sense used in the interference-alignment literature). We show that the number of degrees of freedom of a generic MIMO Rayleigh block-fading channel with $T$ transmit antennas and block length $N$ is given b…
Amplitude-coherent (AC) detection is an efficient detection technique that can simplify the receiver design while providing reliable symbol error rate (SER). Therefore, this work considers AC detector design and SER analysis using M-ary amplitude shift keying (MASK) modulation over Rician fading channels. More specifically, we derive the optimum, near-optimum and a suboptimum AC detectors and compare their SER to the coherent, noncoherent and the heuristic AC detectors. Moreover, the analytical SER of the heuristic detector is derived using two different approaches for single and multiple rece…
Error performance of noncoherent detection of on-off frequency shift keying (OOFSK) modulation over fading channels is analyzed when the receiver is equipped with multiple antennas. The analysis is conducted for two cases: 1) the case in which the receiver has the channel distribution knowledge only; and 2) the case in which the receiver perfectly knows the fading magnitudes. For both cases, the maximum a posteriori probability (MAP) detection rule is derived and analytical probability of error expressions are obtained. Numerical and simulation results indicate that for sufficiently low duty c…
This paper concerns the maximum coding rate at which data can be transmitted over a noncoherent, single-antenna, Rayleigh block-fading channel using an error-correcting code of a given blocklength with a block-error probability not exceeding a given value. A high-SNR normal approximation of the maximum coding rate is presented that becomes accurate as the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and the number of coherence intervals $L$ over which we code tend to infinity. Numerical analyses suggest that the approximation is accurate at SNR values above 15dB and when the number of coherence intervals is 10…
We establish a lower bound on the noncoherent capacity pre-log of a temporally correlated Rayleigh block-fading single-input multiple-output (SIMO) channel. Our result holds for arbitrary rank Q of the channel correlation matrix, arbitrary block-length L > Q, and arbitrary number of receive antennas R, and includes the result in Morgenshtern et al. (2010) as a special case. It is well known that the capacity pre-log for this channel in the single-input single-output (SISO) case is given by 1-Q/L, where Q/L is the penalty incurred by channel uncertainty. Our result reveals that this penalty can…
We study the generalized degrees of freedom (gDoF) of block-fading noncoherent multiple input multiple output (MIMO) channels with asymmetric distributions of link strengths and a coherence time of T symbol durations. We derive the optimal signaling structure for communication for the asymmetric MIMO channel, which is distinct from that for the MIMO channel with independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) links. We extend the existing results for the single input multiple output (SIMO) channel with i.i.d. links to the asymmetric case, proving that selecting the statistically best antenna …
This work studies the capacity of multipath fading channels. A noncoherent channel model is considered, where neither the transmitter nor the receiver is cognizant of the realization of the path gains, but both are cognizant of their statistics. It is shown that if the delay spread is large in the sense that the variances of the path gains decay exponentially or slower, then capacity is bounded in the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). For such channels, capacity does not tend to infinity as the SNR tends to infinity. In contrast, if the variances of the path gains decay faster than exponentially, t…
We characterize the capacity of Rayleigh block-fading multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channels in the noncoherent setting where transmitter and receiver have no a priori knowledge of the realizations of the fading channel. We prove that unitary space-time modulation (USTM) is not capacity-achieving in the high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regime when the total number of antennas exceeds the coherence time of the fading channel (expressed in multiples of the symbol duration), a situation that is relevant for MIMO systems with large antenna arrays (large-MIMO systems). This result settles a…
We consider the design of multiuser constellations for a multiple access channel (MAC) with K users, with M antennas each, that transmit simultaneously to a receiver equipped with N antennas through a Rayleigh block-fading channel, when no channel state information (CSI) is available to either the transmitter or the receiver. In full-diversity scenarios where the coherence time is at least T>= (K+1)M, the proposed constellation design criterion is based on the asymptotic expression of the multiuser pairwise error probability (PEP) derived by Brehler and Varanasi. In non-full diversity scenario…
In this paper, transmission over the additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel, and coherent and noncoherent fading channels using M-ary orthogonal frequency-shift keying (FSK) or on-off frequency-shift keying (OOFSK) is considered. The receiver is assumed to perform hard-decision detection. In this setting, energy required to reliably send one bit of information is investigated. It is shown that for fixed M and duty cycle, bit energy requirements grow without bound as the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) vanishes. The minimum bit energy values are numerically obtained for different values of M …
To understand the network response to large-scale physical attacks, we investigate the asymptotic capacity of a half-duplex fading relay network with random node failures when the number of relays $N$ is infinitely large. In this paper, a simplified independent attack model is assumed where each relay node fails with a certain probability. The noncoherent relaying scheme is considered, which corresponds to the case of zero forward-link channel state information (CSI) at the relays. Accordingly, the whole relay network can be shown equivalent to a Rayleigh fading channel, where we derive the $ε…
The low-snr capacity of M-ary PSK transmission over both the additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and fading channels is analyzed when hard-decision detection is employed at the receiver. Closed-form expressions for the first and second derivatives of the capacity at zero snr are obtained. The spectral-efficiency/bit-energy tradeoff in the low-snr regime is analyzed by finding the wideband slope and the bit energy required at zero spectral efficiency. Practical design guidelines are drawn from the information-theoretic analysis. The fading channel analysis is conducted for both coherent and no…
We present a novel closed-form lower bound on the Gaussian-input mutual information for noncoherent communication (i.e., in which neither transmitter nor receiver are cognizant of the fading state) over a frequency-flat fading channel with additive noise. Our bound yields positive (non-trivial) values even in the most challenging case of zero-mean fast fading, a regime in which the conventional approach of orthogonal time-multiplexed pilots is unavailing and for which, to the best of the author's knowledge, no simple analytical bound is known. Its derivation relies on endowing the transmit sig…