Using space time coding MIMO system for software-defined radio to improve BER

Abstract

The demand for mobile communication systems with global coverage, interfacing with various standards and protocols, high data rates and improved link quality for a variety of applications has dramatically increased in recent years. The Software-Defined Radio (SDR) is the recent proposal to achieve these. In SDR, new concepts and methods, which can optimally exploit the limited resources, are necessary. Multiple antenna system is one of those, which resort to transmit strategies, referred to as Space-Time Codes (STCs). It gives high quality error performance by incorporating spatial and temporal redundancy. The paper discusses the space-time block codes and highlights the trade-off between the number of transmitter and receiver antennas and the bit error rate. We simulate MIMO systems using M-ary Phase Shift Keying (PSK) and compare the results with Single Input Single Output (SISO) systems. This analysis can be helpful in choosing the desired modulation scheme depending upon the Bit error rate (BER) and Signal to noise ratio (SNR) requirements of the service.