Performance degradation of a transmit diversity scheme due to correlated fading

The error performance of the Alamouti simple transmit diversity (STD) scheme in the presence of time-selectivity and channel estimation errors has been previously studied. In this thesis, results are obtained for two other scenarios: (1) non time-selective, spatially correlated Rayleigh fading with imperfect channel estimation and (2) time-selective, spatially correlated Rayleigh fading with perfect channel estimation. Exact expressions for the conditional bit error rates given the estimated channel gains are derived and approximations for average bit error rates over correlated Rayleigh fading are obtained using matrix transformations. It is found that STD performance generally degrades with increase in channel estimation errors, decrease in temporal correlation and increase in spatial correlation. The degradation is greatest with channel estimation errors, then time-selectivity and thirdly with spatial correlation.Applied Science, Faculty ofElectrical and Computer Engineering, Department ofGraduat