  This paper investigates the performance of the point-to-point
multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) systems in the presence of a large but
finite numbers of antennas at the transmitters and/or receivers. Considering
the cases with and without hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) feedback, we
determine the minimum numbers of the transmit/receive antennas which are
required to satisfy different outage probability constraints. Our results are
obtained for different fading conditions and the effect of the power amplifiers
efficiency on the performance of the MIMO-HARQ systems is analyzed. Moreover,
we derive closed-form expressions for the asymptotic performance of the
MIMO-HARQ systems when the number of antennas increases. Our analytical and
numerical results show that different outage requirements can be satisfied with
relatively few transmit/receive antennas.
