Impact of the propagation environment on the performance of space-frequency coded MIMO-OFDM

Previous work on space-frequency coded multiple-input multiple-output orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (MIMO-OFDM) has been restricted to idealistic propagation conditions. In this paper, using a broadband MIMO channel model taking into account Ricean K-factor, transmit and receive angle spread, and antenna spacing, we study the impact of the propagation environment on the performance of space-frequency coded MIMO-OFDM. For a given space-frequency code, we quantify the achievable diversity order and coding gain as a function of the propagation parameters. We find that while the presence of spatial receive correlation, affects all space-frequency codes equally, spatial fading correlation at the transmit array can result in widely varying performance losses. High-rate space-frequency codes such as spatial multiplexing are typically significantly more affected by transmit correlation than low-rate codes such as space-frequency block codes. We show that in the MIMO Ricean case the presence of frequency-selectivity typically results in improved performance compared to the frequency-flat case.