Performance and distance spectrum of space-time codes in fast Rayleigh fading channels

In this paper, we analyze the performance of space-time codes and propose a distance spectrum computation method in fast Rayleigh fading channels. We first derive a new FER upper bound using the union bound and the PEP upper bound in the fast fading environment. The derived FER upper bound is very accurate, requires only the distance spectrum of the space-time code, and takes a closed-form expression. Then we propose a complexity reduction method of computing the distance spectrum of space-time codes in fast fading channels, which exploits the symmetric property of the error state diagram. Numerical results exhibit that the derived FER bound is tight enough to estimate the performance of space-time codes in fast fading channels with sufficient accuracy.