In this thesis, we focus on the analysis of the moments method, showing its importance in the application of random matrices to wireless communication. This study is conducted in the free probability framework. The concept of free convolution/deconvolution can be used to predict the spectrum of sums or products of random matrices which are asymptotically free. In this framework, we show that the moments method is very appealing and powerful in order to derive the moments/asymptotic moments for cases when the property of asymptotic freeness does not hold. In particular, we focus on Gaussian random matrices with finite dimensions and structured matrices as Vandermonde matrices. We derive the explicit series expansion of the eigenvalue distribution of various models, as noncentral Wishart distributions, as well as correlated zero mean Wishart distributions. We describe an inference framework so flexible that it is possible to apply it for repeated combinations of random ma- trices. The results that we present are implemented generating subsets, permutations, and equivalence relations. We developped a Matlab routine code in order to perform convolution or deconvolution numerically in terms of a set of input moments. We apply this inference framework to the study of cognitive networks, as well as to the study of wireless networks with high mobility. We analyze the asymptotic moments of random Vandermonde matrices with entries on the unit circle. We use them and polynomial expansion detectors in order to design a low complexity linear MMSE decoder to recover the signal transmitted by mobile users to a base station or two base stations, represented by uniform linear arrays.
Moments method for random matrices with applications to wireless communication.