Performance of Orthogonal Space-Time Block Codes over Correlated Rayleigh Channels

In this paper, using the equivalent single-input single-out (SISO) model, we derive the exact symbol error rate (SER) and bit error rate (BER) of orthogonal space-time block codes (OSTBCs) with multiple modulations over flat uncorrelated and correlated Rayleigh fading channels. We provide the impact of antenna correlation on the performance of OSTBCs. The results showed that the symbol error rate decreases while the number of transmit or receiver antennas increases. When the number of receiving antennas is fixed, the performance of OSTBCs is improved with the increasing number of transmitting antennas, but the more the number of transmitting antennas, the less the improvement. With the increase of the correlation coefficient, the performance of coding is decreasing.