Time-reversal space-time block coded WCDMA receiver in urban and suburban environments

Time-reversal space-time block coding (TR-STBC) allows spatial diversity gains to be achieved over time-dispersive channels. The technique can be applied to the WCDMA downlink in order to exploit both spatial and multipath diversity. In the paper, a low-complexity frequency-domain implementation of TR-STBC for a WCDMA chip equalisation receiver with complexity approximately one-third that of the time-domain equivalent, enabling implementation on existing DSP devices is proposed the performance of the proposed receiver is evaluated in a macro-cellular train (suburban) scenario and a micro-cellular street (urban) scenario. The effects of base-station antenna spacing are investigated. It is shown that the proposed TR-STBC receiver can provide significant performance benefits over SISO chip equalisers and TR-STBC RAKE receivers in a rich-scattering urban environment, even for small base-station antenna spacings.