On the performance of space-time codes over correlated Rayleigh fading channels

We derive the exact pairwise error probability (PEP) for the space-time coding over quasi-static Rayleigh fading channels in the presence of spatial fading correlation. We show that receive correlation always degrades the PEP for all SNRs. We quantify the effect of receive correlation by employing the notion of "majorization". We show that the stronger the receive correlation, the worse the PEP for all SNRs. For the orthogonally designed space-time blocks (ODSTBC), we analyze the effects of transmit and receive correlation on the performance hi terms of PEP and symbol error probability. We show that transmit correlation also deteriorates the performance of ODSTBC. We observe a duality between the transmit correlation and receive correlation for the ODSTBC.