We investigate the stabilization of unstable multidimensional partially observed single-sensor and multi-sensor (single-controller) discrete-time linear systems driven by unbounded noise and controlled over discrete noiseless channels. Stability is achieved under fixed-rate communication requirements that are asymptotically tight in the limit of large sampling periods. Through the use of similarity transforms, sampling and random-time drift conditions we obtain a coding and control policy leading to the existence of a unique invariant distribution and finite second moment for the sampled state. We obtain tight necessary and sufficient conditions for the generalmulti-sensor case under an assumption related to the Jordan form structure of such systems. In the absence of this assumption, we give sufficient conditions for stabilization.