Error performance of ultrawideband spatial multiplexing systems

In this paper, a number of ultrawideband (UWB) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) spatial multiplexing systems are presented and their error performance is analysed. For both model-based and measured UWB channels, the performance of various MIMO detectors is evaluated under the multiband orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (MB-OFDM) regime. Contrary to expectation, the results demonstrate that significant spatial diversity can be extracted, in addition to linear data-rate scaling, despite the large frequency diversity inherent in the UWB channel. It is shown that nonlinear detection schemes with reasonable complexity can provide considerable diversity gain, in contrast to well-known linear receivers. Thus, the proposed UWB spatial multiplexing schemes not only increase the data rate but also provide significant diversity gain and improved error rate performance.