19

Chapter 3
Methodology
There are two common ways in wireless communication to transfer multiple copies of reliable
data from source towards destination; antenna arrays and MIMO. Most of the wireless networks
have antenna array designed at one end either at transmitter or receiver, usually having on
receiver side. An alternative technique is to use multiple antennas at both end of the wireless
network for reliable data transmission. In 1998 Vahid Tarokh and his group proposed that Space
Time Codes (STCs) provide improvement in error rate over single antenna system [2]. STCs can
be divided into two sub categories; Space Time Trellis Codes (STTC) and Space Time Block
Codes (STBC) [4]. Through STCs multiple copies of original signal is transmitted through
multiple antennas used at transmitter and receiver which helps to overcome fading and other
errors effected during wireless medium transmission. STTCs were the old and complex
technique which distributes the trellis code over multiple antennas to provide good coding and
diversity gain [6]. It has complex encoding and decoding which need Viterbi decoder [7] to
decode original information from diverse received copies at receiver. In 1998 Sviash Alamouti
proposed that if the data streams need to transmit is encoded in the form of blocks and then
distributed through MIMO technology then it provide maximum diversity and coding gain as
compared to other coding schemes.

3.1 STBC Transmission:
The STBCs are expressed through matrices in Figure 3.1, in which rows depict number of time
slots (time) and columns show about transmitting antennas (space).


[

]


Figure 3.1. STBC transmission scheme
Tx Antenna
T
I
M
E

S
L
O
T

20

Where is the modulated symbol transmitted through multiple antennas using multiple time slots,
in , i represents the time slot and j represents the transmitting antenna. In above matrix there are
T time slots and N transmitting antennas [6]. Any two vectors taken from coding matrix will
fulfill the orthogonality principle (e.g. if a.b=0 then vectors a and b will be orthogonal) which
results linear decoding and code rate optimization at receiver [7]. Hence the coding matrix of
STBC is generated in such a manner that its all vectors are orthogonal to each other, due to this
reason STBC is known as OSTBC [1]. OSTBC provides good diversity gain and free of Inter
Symbol Interference (ISI) communication between transmitter and receiver.

3.2 Alamouti STBC Encoding Scheme
For transmitting information symbols through combination of multiple transmit and receiving
antennas, alamouti schemes are mostly used. Alamouti STBC scheme [7] is used in proposed
system, which is well known of achieving code rate 1. In this coding scheme, there are 2
transmitting antennas and 2 receiving antennas which achieve spatial diversity with the help of
two antennas mounted on both end [8]. Consider a stream of data which need to transmit using
scheme. A simple system can be shown in Figure 3.2.

Figure 3.2: Alamouti STBC Transmission Scheme
Figure 3.2, have 2-transmitting antennas and 2-receiving antennas used in Alamouti transmission
scheme to achieve transmit diversity [8]. The transmission of data stream from transmitter to
21

destination completes in 2-hops and takes two time slots using TDD [1]. From supposed data
stream in the first time slot T1, through antenna Tx1 and through antenna Tx2 are transmitted
towards receiver and in second time slot T2, through antenna Tx1 along through antenna Tx2 are
transmitted [3]. In time slot T3, through Tx1 and through Tx2 are transmitted and in next time
slot T4, through Tx1 and through Tx2 are transmitted towards receiver and so on, where shows
conjugate [7].

Figure. 3.3: Alamouti STBC Encoded Transmission Matrix
The transmitted data symbols and from our above supposed data sequence with the help of
vectors in a matrix using Alamouti STBC scheme. The code matrix C shown in Figure 3.3 is
broadcasted in wireless medium through 2-transmitting antennas of the transmitter towards
receiver.
Alamouti proposed a novel MIMO technique which is implemented now a days in many
networks, before this there was technique of transmitting one symbol in one time slot but
Alamouti proposed to transmit two symbols in one time slot [7]. The data rate is not increased
through this process because still two time slots needed to transmit two symbols, so data rate
remains the same [8].

3.3 Multiple antenna systems:
The characteristics of a wireless channel present a fundamental technical challenge for reliable
communications subject to time-varying impairments such as noise, interference, and multipath
[3]. In an effort to conquer fading to support high rate data transmission over such a channel,
[

]
22

several diversity techniques were naturally introduced to improve the performance of wireless
communication system. Space diversity, i.e. multiple antenna system, has received significant
attention recently after extensive research on time diversity and frequency diversity. [2] and [3]
showed the enormous capacity promised by multiple antenna systems in a fading environment,
which greatly inspired the search for optimum techniques and coding algorithms for multiple
input multiple output (MIMO) channels. The classic approach is to use multiple receive antennas
or polarization diversity reception and employ maximum ratio combining (MRC) of the received
signals to improve performance. However, receive diversity techniques have typically been
applied at the base stations since applying receive diversity at the mobile stations increases their
computational complexity which may not be allowed by the limited power. Limitations on the
power and size of the mobile terminals requires serious design consideration when employing
sophisticated power consuming signal processing techniques for reliable communications and
efficient spectral utilization. Though continuing advances in very large scale integration (VLSI)
system, application-specific integrated circuit
(ASIC) technology for low power devices, and system on chip (SOC) provide a partial solution,
involving less signal processing burden on mobile terminals than fixed base stations with
relatively larger power supply makes good engineering sense.

Different transmit diversity techniques have then been proposed earlier in order to introduce
diversity gain for mobile stations by upgrading base stations. For example, [7] presented a switch
diversity scheme with information feedback, [8] presented a diversity scheme invoking feed
forward or training information, and proposed a blind diversity scheme. Recently, space time
trellis coding (STTC) was proposed by jointly designing the channel coding, modulation and
transmit diversity. Performance criteria for designing STTC codes were derived in for a flat
fading channel. STTC perform extremely well, however, the computational complexity is also
significant. When the number of antennas is fixed, the decoding complexity of STTC increases
exponentially as a function of the diversity level and transmission rate. In addressing the issue of
complexity, a remarkable scheme, called OSTBC, was proposed by using two transmit antennas
and generalized in to an arbitrary number of antenna to provide full diversity gain with extremely
low computational complexity. Despite the associated performance penalty comparing with
STTC, OSTBC is still very appealing in terms of its simplicity and performance. Further study in
23

has shown that OSTBC concatenated with channel codes outperform STTC with comparable
complexity.

1.1.2 Space Time Block Codes
In this section, we present the principles of OSTBC following the seminal contributions.
Consider a wireless system with N transmit antennas and M receive antennas. The channel is
assumed to be quasi-static with flat fading, which means that the channel is constant within one
frame period, but varies independently between frames. Furthermore, perfect channel state
information is assumed available at the receiver, but the channel is unknown at the transmitter.
Let T represent the number of time slots used to transmit S symbols. Hence, a general form for
the transmission matrix of a OSTBC is:


(

(1.2)

where g represents a linear combination of the signal constellation components and their
conjugates, and are transmitted simultaneously from the ith transmit antennas in the j t h time
slot for i = 1 . . . N and j = 1 . . . T. Since there are S symbols transmitted over T time slots, the
code rate of the OSTBC is given by
R = S/T
At a particular time nT, the received signal corresponding to the nth input block spanning T time
slots is
Y
nT
= HG
T
+WnT,

where Y
nT
is a n MxT matrix, H is an M x N fading channel coefficient matrix with i.i.d.
(independent, identically distributed) entries modeled as circular complex Gaussian random
variables, G
T
is the transpose of G with size NxT, and W
nT
is an MxT receiver noise matrix with
i.i.d. entries modeled as circular complex Gaussian random variables with zero mean and
24

variance N
o
/2 in each dimension. At the receiver end, a combining technique similar to MRC can
be applied to obtain full diversity gain [9].

A. Two Transmit Antennas OSTBC
As mentioned above, the simplest form of OSTBC, which is a two transmit antenna based
scheme associated with N=2, was proposed by [9]. The associated transmission matrix is

) (1.4)


It is shown in the transmission matrix G
2
that there are N=2 transmit antennas, S=2 input
symbols, namely x
1
, x
2
, and the code spans T=2 time slots. x
1
*
and x
2
*
are the conjugates of
symbols x
l
and x
2
, respectively. Since S=T=2, the code rate given by (1.4) is unity. The
associated encoding and transmission process in shown in Table 3.1.
Table 3.1: Encoding and transmission process for the OSTBC G
2

Time Slot
T
Transmit Antenna
Tx
1
Tx
2

1 x
1
x
2

2 -x
2
*
-x
1
*


At any particular time instant T, two signals are simultaneously transmitted from transmit
antennas Tx
l
and Tx
2
. For example, in time slot 1, signal x
1
and x
2
are transmitted simultaneously
from the transmit antennas Tx
l
and Tx
2
, respectively. In the next time slot, signal -x
1
*
and x
2
*
; are
transmitted simultaneously from transmit antennas Tx
l
and Tx
2
, respectively.
25


Fig. 3.4: Baseband representation of OSTBC G
2
of (1.4) with one receive antenna

Fig. 3.4 shows the baseband representation of OSTBC G
p
of (1.4) with one receive antenna. As
mentioned earlier, the channel is assumed to be flat fading, i.e. the complex fading envelop hl
and h2 are assumed to be constant across the corresponding two consecutive time slots.
Independent additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) samples are added by the receiver in each
time slot. The received signals over flat fading channels can be expressed as
y
1
= h
1
x
1
+h
2
x
2
+n
1
(1.5)
y
2
= h
1
x
1
*
+h
2
x
2
+n
2
(1.6)

26

where yl is the first received signal and y2 is the second. Note that the received signal yl consists
of the transmitted signals xl and x2, while y2 consists of their conjugates. In order to decode the
transmitted signals, we have to extract the signals xl and x2 from the received signals yl and yp.
With perfect channel state information available at the receiver, the received signals are
combined as follows to decode XI and x2.

(|

(1.7)

(|

(1.8)


It is easy to see from (1.7) and (1.8) that x1 and x2 have been separated from y and y2 by simple
multiplications and additions due to the orthogonality of OSTBC [10]. Both signals are then
passed to the maximum likelihood detector as shown in Fig. 3.4 to determine the most likely
transmitted symbols xl and x2. Note that the OSTBC combiner has a form similar to MRC for
receive diversity. Similarly, for OSTBC G2 with 2 receive antennas, the received signals can be
combined to generate as follows

(|

(1.9)

(|

(1.10)

In the generalized form with M receive antennas, we have

[(|

(1.11)

[(|

(1.12)

27

It can be easily observed that OSTBC G2 with M receive antennas has the same diversity order
as MRC with 2M-order receive diversity.

B. Other OSTBCs
It is shown in [10] based on the theory of orthogonal designs that full rate OSTBCs exist for any
number of transmit antennas using an arbitrary real constellation such as PAM. For an arbitrary
complex constellation such as PSK/QAM, half rate OSTBCs exist for any number of transmit
antennas, while full rate OSTBCs only exist for 2 transmit antennas. In another word, Gz is the
only full rate complex OSTBC. As specific cases for three and four transmit antennas, rate 1/2
and 3/4 OSTBCs are given in [10], and are denoted as G3, G4, and H3, H4, respectively, and are
given by

(1.13)

, (1.14)

(1.15)


28


and

(1.16)


[12], [13] present two simpler rate 3/4 OSTBCs, namely

) (1.18)

for four transmit antennas. [14] presents two generalized complex orthogonal space-time block
codes

of rate 7/11 for five transmit antennas and
29

(1.20)
of rate 3/5 for six transmit antennas.
In Table 3.2, we summarize the parameters associated with all OSTBC codes given in [10], [14].
The decoding algorithms and the corresponding performances of these OSTBCs were given in
[11].
Table 3.2: Different OSTBCs
STBC Code Rate
R
No. of Tx
Antennas
N
No. of Input
Symbols
S
Code Span
T
G2 2 2 2
G3 3 4 8
30

G4 4 4 8
H3 3/4 3 3 4
H4 3/4 4 3 4
G5 7/11 5 7 11
G6 3/5 6 18 30

References:
[9] S. Alamouti, "A simple transmit diversity technique for wireless communications," IEEE
Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, vol. 16, pp. 1451-1458, Oct. 1998.
[10] V. Tarokh, H. Jafarkhani, and A. Calderbank, "Space-time block codes from orthogonal
designs," IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, vol. 45, pp. 1456-1467, July 1999.
[11] V. Tarokh, H. Jafarkhani, and A. Calderbank, "Space-time block coding for wireless
communications: Performance results," IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, vol.
17, pp. 451-460, Mar. 1999.
[12] G. Ganesan and P. Stoica, "Space-time block codes: A maximum SNR approach," IEEE
Transactions on Information Theory, vol. 47, pp. 1650-1656, May 2001.
[13] 0. Tirkkonen and A. Hottinen, "Square-matrix embeddable space-time block codes for
complex signal constellations," IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, vol. 48, pp. 1122-
1126, Feb. 2002.
[14] W. Su and X.G Xia, "Two generalized complex orthogonal space-time block codes of rates
7/11 and 315 for 5 and 6 transmit antennas," IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, vol. 49,
pp. 313 -316, Jan. 2003.