Mutual Information Approximation

Abstract: To provide an efficient approach to characterize the input-output mutual information (MI) under additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel, this short report fits the curves of exact MI under multilevel quadrature amplitude modulation (M-QAM) signal inputs via multi-exponential decay curve fitting (M-EDCF). Even though the definition expression for instanious MI versus Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) is complex and the containing integral is intractable, our new developed fitting formula holds a neat and compact form, which possesses high precision as well as low complexity. Generally speaking, this approximation formula of MI can promote the research of performance analysis in practical communication system under discrete inputs.