BER Performance Investigation of OSTBC-MIMO Systems Concatenated with QAM-TCM Over AWGN and Fading Channels

Modern wireless communication technologies require improved reliability, efficient spectrum utilization, and huge data rates that achieve better channel capacity. Multi Input Multi Output (MIMO) systems with multiple antenna elements at both link ends are an efficient solution to enhance the system performance under the constraints of limited bandwidth and transmit power by using Orthogonal Space-Time Block Code (OSTBC). In this work, a performance investigation of uncoded and Trellis-coded QAM, sequential with OSTBC
$2\mathrm{x}2, \ 2\mathrm{x}3$
, and
$4\mathrm{x}4$
MIMO systems over AWGN and fading channels, in terms of Bit Error Rate. The simulation outcomes indicate that the more signal to noise ratio (Eb/No) is required for uncoded QAM to achieve the same BER performance of Trellis coded QAM. The overall system performance has been improved by about 3.5 dB in terms of Eb/No saving in the case of applying Trellis Coded Modulation (TCM) technique. Additionally, the simulation outcomes exhibited that the system in both cases uncoded-QAM and Trellis coded-QAM has performed better in the case of AWGN channel compared to Rician and Rayleigh channels.