BER Analysis of STBC Codes for MIMO Rayleigh Flat Fading Channels

Abstract

The paper presents the analysis of Space-Time Block Codes (STBC) used in Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) systems to assure transmit diversity. The receive diversity is resolved with a Maximum Ratio Combining technique. For a fixed number of transmit antennas, the performances of different STBC codes are analyzed in terms of Bit Error Rate (BER) and diversity gain for a quasi-static Rayleigh flat fading channel. Finally, it is shown that by increasing the number of transmit/receive antennas, the system performances increase.

Keywords

• Bit error rate
• maximum ratio combiner
• receive diversity
• space-time block codes
• transmit diversity