IJECT Vol.

6, Issue 4, Oct - Dec 2015 ISSN : 2230-7109 (Online) | ISSN : 2230-9543 (Print)

Capacity and Performance Analysis of MIMO-Space

Time Block Code System
1
Shubhangi R.Chaudhary, 2Ashwini V. Yadao
1,2
MKSSS's Cummins College of Engineering for Women, Savitribai Phule University, Pune, India

Abstract
Spectrum is a limited resource in wireless communication and A typical MIMO system with the signal processing subsystem is
thus it limits the data rate for transmission. But the emergence of shown in the Fig.1 below:
multiple antenna system i.e MIMO (Multi Input Multi Output)
has explored the space dimension for information transmission.
MIMO system provides a solution for increase in gain of capacity
without increasing the use of spectrum. Thus, the MIMO is an
attractive scheme in the evolution of fourth generation broadband
wireless communication. The MIMO system is mainly attractive
for increasing the efficiency with multiple antennas. The MIMO
scheme had been simulated and evaluated in terms of Bit Error
Rate (BER) versus the Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) .

Keywords
MIMO Systems, Space-time Block Codes, BER, SNR,
Capacity.

I. Introduction Fig. 1: A typical MIMO System with STBC

MIMO systems are considered to provide high data rate and are
robust to multipath delay in wireless communication [1]. Channel
parameters are needful for decoding, detection and diversity
combining. Whereas MIMO scheme offers the lager system
capacity and diversity in mobile wireless links.
Mobile communication starting from 2G,3G and now 4G with data
rates varying from 12kbps in 2G to 2Mbps in 3G and 100Mbps
in 4G [2]. Increase in the capacity is responsible for increase
in data rates. MIMO system help us to increase the data rate
by using spatial multiplexing and It also utilize the multipath
components to increase the diversity order or received SNR. We
can increase capacity by precoding at the transmitter which is
nothing but transmitting the symbol in the desired direction and
beamforming at the receiver. This precoding and beamforming
process can increase the capacity by min(r, t) where r and t are
number of antenna at receiver and transmitter respectively.
A. Space Time Block Codes
MIMO exploits multipath environment for increasing data rate
which is possible with space time coding techniques. Space-Time
codes make it possible to achieve coding gain as well as diversity
benefit without expanding bandwidth. Space-time block coding
scheme in MIMO systems enable the transmission of multiple
copies of a data stream across a number of antennas and exploit
the various received versions of the data for reliable data transfer.
In [3] Tarokh et al has introduced the Space-time coding using
multiple transmit and receive antennas. A space time block code
is usually represented by a matrix. Each row represents a time
slot and each column represents one antenna’s transmissions over
time.
(2)

II. MIMO System
Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO), is a radio communication
technology which mainly focus on the spatial diversity and spatial
multiplexing. In MIMO system the capacity of the channel is
increased linearly with the increase in number of receive and
transmit antennas [3-4].
Spatial diversity technology under MIMO is regarded to improve
the signal to noise ratio and thus the reliability of the system against
various forms of fading. Researchers, Paulraj and Kailath (1998)
introduced the spatial multiplexing feature of MIMO to provide
additional capacity using different paths.
Let’s consider some central concepts for flat fading MIMO signal
model defined as:
Within this matrix, Sij is the modulated symbol to be transmitted
in time slot i from antenna j. There are to be T time slots and
transmit antennas as well as receive antennas. This block is
usually considered to be of ‘length’ T.
space–time coding combines all the copies of the received signal
in an optimal way to extract as much information from each of
them as possible.
B. Alamouti Space-Time Code
Alamouti in [5] has proposed a simple diversity concept for
achieving transmit diversity.

(1)

where 's' is the received signal vector, s is the transmitted signal

vector , 'n' is the noise, H is the channel response and is assumed as Fig. 2: Block Diagram of the Alamouti Space-Time Encoder
i.i.d zero mean and unit variance complex Gaussian channel.

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ISSN : 2230-7109 (Online) | ISSN : 2230-9543 (Print) IJECT Vol. 6, Issue 4, Oct - Dec 2015

The information bits are first modulated using an M-ary modulation Where (*) means transpose-conjugate and is the channel
scheme. The encoder then takes a block of two modulated symbols matrix.
and in each encoding operation and gives it to the transmit
antennas according to the code matrix [6], IV. Simulated Results

(3)

the first column represents the first transmission period and the
second column the second transmission period. The first row
corresponds to the symbols transmitted from the first antenna
and the second row corresponds to the symbols transmitted from
the second antenna [6].

III. Capacity Analysis

In this section, we focus on MIMO channel capacity. Channel
capacity can be defined as maximum mutual information between
the channel input and output for single user time invariant channel.
Shannon channel capacity is defined as the maximum mutual
information averaged over all channel states [7].

The formula for capacity per channel use b/s/Hz given by Shannon
for a single channel is as follows: Fig. 3: BER Vs SNR Plot Alamouti STBC System
(4)

where B is the bandwidth, is the received SNR.

A. Capacity of SISO System

The capacity for Single-Input Single Output (SISO) i.e no diversity
system with practical time-varying and randomly fading wireless
channel is given as:

(5)
where B is the bandwidth, is the received SNR and is the
channel transfer characteristic of channel matrix h.

B. Capacity of SIMO System

Single-Input Multiple-Output (SIMO) i.e receive diversity system
have multiple antennas at the receiver but only one antenna at
the transmitter.
The capacity for Single-Input Multiple-Output (SIMO) i.e receive Fig. 4: BER Vs SNR Plot for SISO, 2X1 STBC and 2X2 STBC
diversity system is given as: system

(6) With the increase number of antennas, the BER performance

where H is 1x M channel vector , and M is the number of receiver improves.
antennas.
C apacity of MIMO with different Tx and R x antenna configurations
25
C. Capacity of MISO System 1x1-S IS O
The Multiple-Input Single-Output (MISO) system have multiple 1x2-S IMO
antennas at transmitter and only one at receiver. The capacity for 20 2x1-MIS O
2x2-MIMO
Multiple-Input Single-Output (MISO) i.e receive diversity system 4x4-MIMO
with N transmit antennas is given as:
15
Capacity (bps/Hz)

where H is Nx1 channel vector, and N is the number of transmitter 10

antennas.

D. Capacity of MIMO System 5

The capacity of a MIMO system with N transmitter and M receiver

antennas is given by:
0
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20
S NR [dB ]
(7)
Fig .5: Capacity Plot for SISO Vs SIMO Vs MISO Vs MIMO

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IJECT Vol. 6, Issue 4, Oct - Dec 2015 ISSN : 2230-7109 (Online) | ISSN : 2230-9543 (Print)

The capacity of MIMO systems is better than SISO and other
systems. Due to the spatial diversity by reducing fading and
improving SNR, there is an increase in the capacity of the system.
However, the improvement in SNR is limited, as it is increasing
inside the log function.
Multiple antennas increases the capacity but the significant
improvement in capacity is achieved with equal or higher number
of receive antennas compare to transmit antennas.
[4] G. Foschini, M. Gans,“On limits of wireless communications
in a fading environment when using multiple antennas,”
Wireless personal communications, Vol. 6, No. 3, pp. 311–
335, 1998.
[5] S. Alamouti,“A simple transmitter diversity, technique for
wireless communications,” IEEE Journal of Selected Areas
of Communication, Vol. 16, No. 8, pp. 1451-1458, Oct.
1998.
[6] Mohinder Jankiraman,"Space-time codes and MIMO
systems", Artech House, Boston, 2004.
[7] Srikrishna Bardhan,''Capacity and Performance Analysis of
MIMO-STBC in Rayleigh Fading Channels", International
Journal of Engineering Research & Technology (IJERT),
Vol. 1, Issue 8, October - 2012.

Fig. 6: Capacity Plot for SISO With Different Bandwidth

It is clear from the Fig. 6 that capacity increases as the bandwidth

is increased. The capacity increases 1bps/Hz for every 3dB of
SNR values.

V. Conclusion
The Alamouti scheme has been simulated for various modulation
in Rayleigh channel. The better BER curve produced by a
system which uses more number of antennas at both sides of the
communication link.

Space-time block codes with lower modulation order always

provide low bit-error-rate than the space-time block codes with
higher order modulation scheme.

Moreover for improving wireless communication it is beneficial

to transmit data using many different low-powered channels than
using one single, high-powered channel.

Furthermore, future scope can be seen as the MIMO - OFDM

combination as the best way to exploit the spatial diversity, time
diversity and frequency diversity. This can improves the overall
system performance.

References
[1] Aida Zair, Ridha Bouallegue,"Blind Channel Estimation
Enhancement for MIMO-OFDM Systems Under High
Mobility Conditions," International Journal of Wireless
& Mobile Networks (IJ WMN), Vol. 4, No. 1, February
2012.
[2] David Tse, Pramod Viswanath,"Fundamentals of Wireless
Communication", Cambridge University Press, 2005.
[3] V. Tarokh, H. Jafarkhani, A. R. Calderbank,“Space time
block codes from orthogonal designs,” IEEE Transaction
on Information Theory, Vol. 45, No. 5, pp. 744-765, Jul.
1999.

140 International Journal of Electronics & Communication Technology w w w. i j e c t. o r g