Performance of space-time block codes with QAM under the spatially correlated channels

Space-time block codes are one of the promising techniques in transmit diversity. Also, it is well known that correlation introduced by the radio environment in fading across multiple diversity channels results in a degradation of the diversity gain obtained. We investigate the performance of STBC with M-QAM under spatially correlated fading channels. An average symbol error probability is derived using the linear transformation method. Through numerical results, we demonstrate the degree of performance degradation in accordance with the spatial correlation.