BER Analysis of Alamouti Space Time Block
Coded 2x2 MIMO Systems using Rayleigh
Dent Mobile Radio Channel
Priyanka Mishra Gurpreet Singh
Department of ECE Department of ECE
United Group of Institution S. B.Singh State Tech. Campus L R of Institute of Engineering United Group of Institution,
Allahabad, U.P. Ferozpur, Punjab
mishrapriyanka6@gmail.com gurpreet2828@hotmail.com rahulvij2@gmail.com
Abstract—The rapidly growing demand for the wireless
transmission of video, speech and data is driving the
communication technology to be more efficient and more
reliable.MIMO has become one of the key technologies for
wireless communication systems. It constitutes a breakthrough in
wireless communication system that offers number of benefits
that helps in improving the reliability of the data link. There are
various techniques to improve the data rate, and one of the
promising transmit diversity scheme is Alamouti space time
block codes. It has been regarded as an effective transmit
diversity technique in existing wireless communication channel
systems for its compatibility with orthogonal two transmit
antennas system and its simple decoding scheme i.e. maximum
likelihood (ML) decoding scheme. In this paper, an approach to
improve the data rate over the multiple antenna channels for
reliable communication.Unlike, most of the technique exists to
achieve full diversity and full rate, we aim to increase the data
rate over the channel by using dent channel model. We exploit
the time and space diversity simultaneously to improve the
performance of the system under mobile radio channel.
Furthermore, simulations and analysis results are carried out
using dent’s channel model in terms of BER and the coding
methods is suggested for 2x2 Alamouti STBC MIMO systems.
Although the technique of two transmit antennas is the main
focus of this paper, the same idea can be directly applied to
Alamouti STBC codes with more than two transmit antennas.
Keywords—Alamouti codes;Space time block codes; ML
decoding;BER;MIMO;SNR
I. INTRODUCTION
Due to explosion of demand for high speed wireless
services, such as wireless internet,e-mail,cellular video
applications, wireless communication has become one of the
most exciting fields in modern engineering .However,
development of such services faces significant challenges to
support the high data rates and capacity required for these
applications with the severely restricted resources in wireless
communication channel. The obstacles associated with
wireless environments are difficult to overcome. Interference
from other users and intersymbol interference (ISI) from
multipath of one’s own signal are serious forms of distortion
[4].
Furthermore, when transmit and receive antennas are in
relative motion, the Doppler effect will spread the frequency
spectrum of received signals [5] and also there are extremely
limited bandwidths. To conserve bandwidth resources, we
978-1-4673-4529-3/12/$31.00 2012
c IEEE
Rahul Vij Gaurav Chandil
Department of ECE Department of ECE,
Solan Allahabad, U.P
gaurav.iiitm18@gmail.com
maximize spectral efficiency by packing as much information
as possible into a given bandwidth. A solution to the
bandwidth and power problem is the cellular concept, in
which frequency bands are allocated to small, low power cells
and reused at cells far away.However,this idea done is not
enough. The solution to this problem is multiple antennas both
for transmission and reception in wireless communication
system, popularly known as MIMO technology. An effective
and practical way to approach these demands of MIMO
wireless channel is to employ Space Time (ST) Coding. It is a
coding technique designed for use with multiple transmits
antennas, to increase data rate, capacity and spectral
efficiency. MIMO system use multiple transmit and receive
antennas to create multiple spatial channels between the
transmitter and the receiver [6-7], which forms the basis to
increase the data rate without increasing the bandwidth. If
perfect channel state information (CSI) is available at the
receiver, the average capacity grows linearly with smaller of
the numbers of transmit and receive antennas under certain
channel conditions. The major potential advantage of MIMO
is that either the quality in terms of bit error rate (BER) or the
data rate of the system can be improved. The performance
improvement of MIMO systems can be assessed by using
diversity gain and spatial multiplexing gain. It is not possible
to achieve maximum diversity and multiplexing
simultaneously because there is trade-off between them
[8].Diversity gain is achieved by transmitting the same signal
over multiple independent fading environments,e.g.,in time,
frequency and spatial domains. Space Time Coding transmits
signal across the spatial and time domain simultaneously in
order to achieve diversity gain without increasing bandwidth.
High data rate can be achieved by using multiple
transmit and receive antennas. However, employing multiple
receive antennas at the mobile units seems less practical due to
the size and power limitations. Thus, transmit diversity
technique becomes a promising approach to achieve diversity
for the downlink (from base-stations to mobiles)
transmissions.Since, the first full-rate full-diversity orthogonal
code proposed by Alamouti for a system with two transmit
antennas [1], there has been extensive work on a variety of
space-time transmission schemes [2]-[3].Space time block
codes (STBCs) [2] have been proposed to realize the enhanced
reliability of multi-antenna systems. When the transmitter has
two antennas, Alamouti codes [1] achieve the full-diversity
154
 performance with a symbol rate of 1 (rate-one).There is no
channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT) but perfect
channel state information at the receiver (CSIR).
In this paper, an approach to improve the data rate over the
multiple antenna channels for reliable communication. Unlike,
most of the technique exists to achieve full diversity and full
rate, we aim to increase the data rate over the channel by using
dent channel model. We exploit the time and space diversity
simultaneously to improve the performance of the system
under mobile radio channel.furthermore, simulations and
analysis results are carried out using dent’s channel model in
terms of BER and the coding methods is suggested for 2x2
Alamouti STBC MIMO systems. Simulation results are
carried out with very simple decoding technique i.e. ML
decoding at the receiver. Although, the technique of two
transmit antennas is the main focus of this paper, the same
idea can be directly applied to Alamouti STBC codes with
more than two transmit antennas.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In section II,
we introduce Alamouti space time block code transceiver
model and briefly review its code design criteria. In section
III, Alamouti STBC is discussed in detail. In section IV, dent
channel model is introduced to the channel .In section V, ML
decoding method is discussed. The simulation results are
presented in section VI, and some conclusions are drawn in
section VII.
II. SYSTEM MODEL
Figure 1. shows, a typical Alamouti STBC-MIMO
communication system consists of transmitter, channel and
receiver. Space Time coding involves use of multiple transmit
and receive antennas. Figure1 shows the transceiver of MIMO
in space time code. Bits entering to the information source
system are mapped into the symbol mapper (modulation)
using different modulation techniques like BPSK,QPSK and
16-QAM.Bits entering the Alamouti space time block encoder
serially are distributed to parallel substreams.Within each
substream,bits are mapped to signal waveforms, which are
then emitted from the antenna corresponding to that
substream.Signals transmitted simultaneously over each
antenna interfere with each other as they propagate through
the wireless channel. The receiver collects the signal at the
output of receiver antenna element and reverses the transmitter
operation in order to decode the data with Alamouti space
time block decoder.
III. ALAMOUTI SPACE TIME BLOCK CODE (STBC)
The approach given by Alamouti [1] is shown in
Figure.1.The information bits are first modulated using an M-
ary modulation scheme. The encoder takes a block of two
modulated symbols in each encoding operation and
gives it to the transmit antennas according to the code matrix.
x1 x2
G x1 , x2 (1)
x2* x1*
2013 3rd IEEE International Advance Computing Conference (IACC)
In (1), the first column represents the first transmission
period and the second column at 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. During the
second symbol period, the first antenna transmits 1and the
second antenna transmit .During the second symbol period,
the first antenna transmits and the second antenna
transmits being the complex conjugate of .
These symbols imply that we are transmitting both in space
i.e. across two antennas and time i.e. two transmission
intervals. This is Space Time Coding.now, the symbols
transmitted from first and second antennas are given below,
(2)
where is the information sequence from the first
antenna and is the information sequence from the second
antenna. Equation (2) reveals that the sequences are
orthogonal i.e. inner the inner product of and is zero.this
inner product is given by,
(3)
In (3), the inner product of sequences from first and second
antenna is given as zero.
The fading coefficients from antennas 1 and 2 are defined
by h1 (t) and h2(t), respectively, at time t. If we assume that
these coefficients are constant across two consecutive symbol
transmission periods, we obtain,
(4)
At the receiver the signals after passing through the
channel can be expressed as,
(5)
where, n1 and n2 are independent complex variables with
zero mean and unit variance, representing additive white
Gaussian noise samples at time t and t + T,respectively
IV. DENT CHANNEL MODEL
A Rayleigh fading channel constitutes Doppler’s spectrum
is produced by synthesizing the complex sinusoids. The
complex output of the jakes model [9], is given as,
E0
h(t) h1 ( t ) jjh Q ( t ) (6)
2N 0 1
155
 The real and imaginary parts [9],is given as,

Transmitter Receiver

Information Symbol Alamouti Alamouti Symbol Destination

Source mapper STBC encoder STBC decoder demapper Source

Fig. 1. Basic block diagram of Alamouti STBC codes

N0 expanding the above equation and deleting terms that are

(c φ n cos w n t )
h(t ) 2 (cos 2 cos φ N cos w d t independent of the code words, the above minimization
n 1 reduces to separately minimizing
N0
h Q (t ) 2 (sin
(si φ n cos w n t ) 2 sin φ N cos w d t (7)
n 1 (11)
The unwanted correlation of Jake’s model is removed in a
for detecting
modification by Dent model. The unwanted correlation can be
corrected by using orthogonal functions generated by Walsh-
(12)
Hadamard codeword to weigh the oscillator values before
summing so that each wave has equal power [10]. The for decoding
weighting is achieved by adjusting the Jake’s model so that
The transmissions in the Alamouti scheme are orthogonal.
the incoming waves have slightly different arrival angles n This implies that the receiver antenna ‘‘sees’’ two completely
.The modified Jakes model is given by, orthogonal streams. Hence, we obtain a transmit diversity of
two. Consider two distinct code sequences and Sˆ
N0 generated by the inputs ( and ( ), respectively,
T (t ) (2 N 0 ) [cos
[co ( n ) i sin( n )] cos(( n t n ) (8) where .
n 1

The code word difference matrix is given by,

where, the normalization factor (2 N 0 ) gives rise to
(13)
E{T (t )T * (t )} 1, N 0 N 4 , i ( 1) , n *n / N0
*n
Since, the rows of the code matrix are orthogonal, the rows
is phase, is initial phase that can be randomized to provide of the code word difference matrix are orthogonal as well. The
code word distance matrix is given by,
different waveform realizations and wn wM cos(( n ) is the
Doppler shift. Dent’s model successfully generates
uncorrelated fading waveforms thereby simulating a Rayleigh
multi-path air channel.
V. MAXIMUM LIKELIHOOD DECODING
We now assume that the channel coefficients h1 and h2 can
be recovered perfectly at the receiver (figure 2). We use these
coefficients as the CSI. The combiner combines the received
signal as follows (14)
=
Since, ,the distance matrixes of any two
= distinct code words have a full rank of two.Alamouti scheme
(9)
gives diversity two.
and sends them to the maximum likelihood detector, which
minimizes the following decision metric, The determinant of matrix is given by

(10)
(15)

156 2013 3rd IEEE International Advance Computing Conference (IACC)

 Transmit
Antenna 1

h1 n1,n2
Channel
Estimater
h2 ML

Signal
Decoder
Transmit receive antenna Combiner
Antenna 2

Fig. 2. Alamouti’s two-antenna transmit diversity [11]

The code word distance matrix at equation (15) has two
identical eigenvalues. The minimum eigen value is equal to
the minimum squared Euclidian distance in the signal
constellation. Hence, the minimum distance between any two
transmitted code sequences remains the same as in the
uncoded system, this implies that the coding gain is one.
VI. SIMULATION RESULTS
The simulation parameters used throughout in this work are
listed out in Table I. Results are then plotted and discussed
using these simulation parameters.
SNR.The modulation technique used is BPSK,QPSK and 16-
QAM for transmission of 1.5 bits/s/Hz. In figure.3 and
figure.4, BER performance is better using BPSK as compared
to QPSK and 16-QAM.Figure.5 shows the comparison of slow
Rayleigh channel model and dent channel model with BPSK
modulation, it is clearly observed that Alamouti STBC with
dent channel model gives better result when compared slow
varying Rayleigh channel system.In both cases BER
performance of BPSK is better compared to QPSK and 16-
QAM.As it is clear from the figure by employing two antennas
system performance is enhanced.

A. Simulation Parameters
VII. CONCLUSION
Simulation parameters are shown Alamouti space time
In this paper, we studied Alamouti STBC-MIMO system
block coding system given in figure 1. are listed in table I.
performance under different mobile radio channel (dent
channel model & Rayleigh channel model). System
TABLE I. Simulation parameters for Alamouti STBC performance is compared with three different modulation
techniques and system with BPSK modulation gives better
result.Futhermore,Alamouti STBC provide code rate of 1 and
S.No. Parameters Values provide full rate and full diversity system with simple
1 No. of transmitters 2 decoding technique. Maximum likelihood (ML) decoding
2 No. of receivers 2 reduces the decoding complexity of the system and enhances
3 Max. Doppler shift(fm) 200Hz the system performance. By employing dent model at the
4 Sampling frequency(fs) 8000Hz channel simulation speed is increased as compared to the
5 modulation BPSK,QPSK, Rayleigh channel model. This increases the data speed. It is
16-QAM clearly observed by the simulation result that the system
6 bandwidth 20 MHz performance enhances using dent channel model.
7 Sampling time(ts) 1/fs
8 No. of Doppler shift(N) 8 REFERENCES
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2013 3rd IEEE International Advance Computing Conference (IACC) 157

 BER for 2Tx,2Rx Alamouti STBC (Rayleigh Channel model) -1
BER for Alamouti STBC in rayleigh and dent channel model BPSK modulation
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158 2013 3rd IEEE International Advance Computing Conference (IACC)