The performance of space-time codes in office environments

This paper investigates the block error rate (BLER) performance of a selection of well-known linear space-time block codes (STBCs), for application in a next generation wireless local area network (WLAN). The codes were evaluated using a diverse range of radio channel measurements recorded in two contrasting office environments. STBCs protected by an outer channel code were considered, rather than space-time trellis codes, as this combination has been shown to be attractive from the standpoint of both high capacity and low complexity [S.Sandhu et al., 2001]. The sensitivity of code performance to the mean Ricean K-factor of the channels is examined; and the relative merits of using a dual polar patch array, opposed to a linear array of monopoles, are investigated. Results for 2×2 MIMO channels show that a well designed rate-two linear code performs better than a simple rate-one orthogonal block code or V-BLAST, but that the differences are small and arguable not worth the additional complexity.