Performance comparison of different MIMO configurations for downlink MC-CDMA systems

The Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output (MIMO) Multicarrier-Code Division Multiple Access (MC-CDMA) system is a potential scheme for future mobile packet transmission. The consideration of performance and computational complexity of different MIMO system configurations will lead to various applications. In this paper, performance of V-BLAST scheme for coded MC-CDMA system and performance comparison of different MIMO MCCDMA system configurations such as V-BLAST scheme and punctured STBC scheme have been investigated. The results show that punctured STBC scheme is better than V-BLAST scheme at the same transmitted data rate (same bandwidth efficiency) in terms of performance and complexity. This is because punctured STBC scheme achieves higher diversity gain without inter-stream interference compared to V-BLAST scheme which has severe inter-stream interference and lower diversity gain. However, the punctured STBC scheme can only work with lower rate channel coding (for puncturing) and STBC coding rate for complex data is less than one for number of antenna more than two. Hence, it is suitable for inexpensive real-time applications with moderate data rate.