Systems and methods are provided for whitening noise of a received signal vector in a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) transmission or storage system. The whitening filter may be designed to whiten an interference component of the received signal vector, where the interference component is derived from modeling transmitter and receiver imperfections as a first coupling between MIMO transmitter outputs and a second coupling between MIMO receiver. The whitening filter may be computed based on the covariance matrix of the interference component.