Performance analysis and design of STBCs for frequency-selective fading channels

In this paper, space-time block-coded transmission over frequency-selective fading channels is investigated. A lower bound for the pairwise error probability for optimum detection is given. Also, an approximation for the bit-error rate is derived and compared with simulation results for maximum-likelihood sequence estimation (MLSE) for the GSM/EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution) system. Furthermore, a novel design rule for space-time block codes (STBCs) for frequency-selective fading channels is provided. A corresponding code is designed and shown to yield higher performance than Alamouti's code. It is demonstrated that for fading channels with L independent impulse response coefficients, STBCs designed for the flat fading channel can achieve at most a diversity order of (N-T + L - 1) N-R if N-T transmit antennas and N-R receive antennas are used. On the other hand, the maximum diversity order employing the proposed code design rule is LNTNR.