Performance evaluation of transmit diversity concepts for WCDMA in multipath fading channels

We analyse the performance of transmit diversity schemes in combination with receive antenna diversity on the downlink of a WCDMA system. The performance of maximum ratio combining and selection diversity combining schemes has been analysed for both open-loop and closed-loop transmit diversity schemes. The analytical framework developed can handle an arbitrary number of transmit and receive antennas. The framework is also used to study the effect of dissimilar received signal strengths at the mobile handset on the average symbol error rate performance of a multitude of digital modulation schemes in a generalized multipath fading environment. Simulation results obtained are shown to be in agreement with the analytical results.