Analysis on Effective SNR Loss of Space-Time Block Coded MIMO System with Channel Estimation Error

Channel estimation error impacts the performance of practical orthogonal space-time block coded (OSTBC) MIMO system. The effective SNR loss is caused by the impact of imperfect channel knowledge. In this paper, we qualitatively analyze on the effective SNR loss, and derive a symbol error rate (SER) expression for PSK modulation scheme in MIMO Rayleigh channel with channel estimation error. However, theoretical analysis show that the sensitivity of MIMO system to channel estimation error increases as the number of receiver antennas increases. Simulation results are furnished to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed analysis.