Comparison of alamouti and STS implementations using a Software Defined Radio test bed

A software defined radio test bed using the Gnu radio project was installed on Unix computers and modified so that estimates of the channel state coefficients were taken for a multiple input multiple output (MIMO) system to take advantage of space time transmission at a frequency of 2.4 GHz. Two MIMO techniques were implemented, one based on Alamouti and the other on Space Time Spreading. The technique used to estimate channel coefficients is described. The Bit Error Rate performance was compared, when using Binary Phase Shift Keying, between the two systems and it was found that the STS system performed better when one of the two transmit channels experienced a large fading event.