Influence of channel characteristics on the performance of VAA with deployed STBCs

The recently introduced concept of virtual antenna arrays (VAAs) promises a significant increase in link and system capacity. VAAs therefore constitute a promising candidate for ad-hoc oriented 4G networks. VAAs successfully emulate a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) transmission channel to which space-time codes (STC) can be applied. The realisation of VAAs is accomplished by letting spatially close mobile terminals communicate with each other, which overcomes the disadvantage of having only one receiving antenna in a mobile handset. The thus created ad-hoc network represents a general form of MIMO channels for which different link level performance results apply. The work presented analyses the link level performance of a VAA system with deployed higher order space-time block codes (STBCs) in dependency of the prevailing channel conditions within the generated ad-hoc network. As such, the influence of Rayleigh, Rice and Nakagami flat fading channels with a varying parameter set onto the performance of generic STBCs with associated VAA is investigated. It is known that for close antenna spacing and/or high Rice K-factors (Nakagami m-factors) the correlation at the receiving end increases, which is shown to be successfully mitigated by the deployment of VAAs.