Diversity and outage performance in space-time block coded Ricean MIMO channels

• Published in: IEEE transactions on wireless communications Vol. 4; no. 5; pp. 2519 - 2532
• Main Authors: Nabar, R.U., Bolcskei, H., Paulraj, A.J.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Piscataway, NJ IEEE 01.09.2005; Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Additive white noise; Applied sciences; AWGN; Block codes; Channels; Codes; Criteria; Error analysis; Error probability; Errors; Exact sciences and technology; Fading; Gaussian; MIMO; Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO); outage probability; Outages; Rayleigh channels; Ricean fading; Signal to noise ratio; space-time coding; spatial diversity; Spectra; Studies; Switching and signalling; Systems, networks and services of telecommunications; Telecommunications; Telecommunications and information theory; Transmission and modulation (techniques and equipments); Wideband; Fading channels; Performance evaluation; MIMO system; Block code; Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO); Space-time codes; AWGN; Error probability; Outage; space-time coding; Space diversity; Subspace method; Rice fading; Signalling; AWGN channels; outage probability; Wide band; spatial diversity; Ricean fading; SISO system; Rayleigh fading; Symbol error rate; Signal to noise ratio
• ISSN: 1536-1276; 1558-2248
• DOI: 10.1109/TWC.2005.853835

The goal of this paper is to assess the impact of real-world propagation conditions on the maximum achievable diversity performance of communication over Ricean multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channels. To this end, we examine a MIMO channel employing orthogonal space-time block codes (OSTBCs) and study the diversity behavior of the resulting effective single-input single-output (SISO) channel. The performance criteria employed are symbol error rate, outage capacity, and wideband spectral efficiency. For general propagation conditions, we establish key quantities that determine performance irrespective of the performance criterion used. Furthermore, we discuss the relation between the notion of diversity order related to the slope of the average error probability versus signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) curve and diversity order related to the slope of the outage probability versus SNR curve. For Ricean fading MIMO channels, we demonstrate the existence of an SNR-dependent critical rate R/sub crit/, below which signaling with zero outage is possible and, hence, the fading channel behaves like an additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel. For SISO channels, R/sub crit/ is always zero. In the MIMO case, R/sub crit/ is a simple function of the angle between the vectorized Ricean component of the channel and the subspace spanned by the vectorized Rayleigh fading component.