Achieving near-Capacity on Large Discrete Memoryless Channels

We propose a method to increase the capacity achieved by uniform prior in discrete memoryless channels (DMC) with high input cardinality. It consists in appropriately reducing the input set. Different design criteria of the input subset are discussed. We develop an efficient algorithm to solve this problem based on the maximization of the cut-off rate. The method is applied to a mono-bit transceiver MIMO system, and it is shown that the capacity can be approached within tenths of a dB by employing standard binary codes while avoiding the use of distribution shapers.