Novel Unified Analysis of Orthogonal Space-Time Block Codes over Generalized-K and AWGGN MIMO Networks

This paper presents a novel unified performance analysis of Space-Time Block Codes (STBCs) operating in the Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) network. Specifically, we derive a novel unified expression for the average bit error rate for all coherent modulation schemes assuming independent and identically distributed generalized-K fading channels, which accounts for both multipath fading and shadowing, and modeled via the Nakagami-m distribution and the gamma distributions, respectively. The noise model in the network is assumed to be an Additive White Generalized Gaussian Noise (AWGGN), which encompasses the Laplacian and the Gaussian noise environments as special cases. The derived expression obviates the need to recalculate the diversity of various receivers for many fading and noise models in a piecemeal fashion. Published results from the literature as well as numerical integration methods corroborate the accuracy of the unified expression.