On the Outage Capacity of Orthogonal Space-Time Block Codes Over Multi-Cluster Scattering MIMO Channels

The multiple cluster scattering MIMO channel is a useful model for pico-cellular MIMO networks. In this paper, space-time coded transmission over such a channel is considered, where the effective channel corresponds to a product of complex Gaussian matrices. An accurate closed-form approximation to the channel outage capacity using orthogonal space-time block codes has been derived. The result is valid for an arbitrary number of clusters of scatterers and an arbitrary antenna configuration. From the analytical and numerical results, we study the relative outage performance between the multi-cluster MIMO channel and the special case of Rayleigh-fading MIMO channel.