We investigate the case of independent Rayleigh faded paths between antenna elements and find that with

high probability extraordinary capacity is available. Compared to the baseline n = 1 case, which by Shannon’s

classical formula scales as one more bit/cycle for every 3 dB of signaltonoise

ratio (SNR) increase, remarkably

withMEAs, the scaling is almost like n more bits/cycle for each 3 dB increase in SNR. To illustrate how great this

capacity is, even for small n, take the cases n = 2, 4 and 16 at an average received SNR of 21 dB. For over 99

of the channels the capacity is about 7, 19 and 88 bits/cycle respectively, while if n = 1 there is only about 1.2

bit/cycle at the 99 level. For say a symbol rate equal to the channel bandwith, since it is the bits/symbol/dimension

that is relevant for signal constellations, these higher capacities are not unreasonable. The 19 bits/cycle for n = 4

amounts to 4.75 bits/symbol/dimension while 88 bits/cycle for n = 16 amounts to 5.5 bits/symbol/dimension.