Upper-bound for the pairwise error probability of space-time codes in physical channel scenarios

In this paper, we derive an upper-bound for the pair-wise error probability of space-time codes which captures the effects of the transmitter and the receiver antenna configurations (antenna separation and antenna geometry) and the surrounding scattering distributions at the transmitter and the receiver antenna arrays. This new upper-bound allows investigation of the individual effects of antenna configuration and scattering environment parameters on the performance of space-time codes. Using this upper-bound, we quantify the degree of the effect of antenna configuration on the diversity advantage given by a space-time code. Simulation results show that as the number of antennas increase within a fixed aperture, the diversity advantage of a space-time code is upper-limited by the size of the antenna aperture