Performance of STBC transmissions with real data

This paper presents a comparative study of three Space-Time Block Coding (STBC) techniques in realistic indoor scenarios. In particular, we focus on the Alamouti orthogonal scheme considering two types of Channel State Information (CSI) estimation: a conventional pilot-aided technique and a new blind method based on Second Order Statistics (SOS). We also considered a Differential (non-coherent) Space-Time Block code (DSTBC) that can be optimally decoded without CSI estimation, although it incurs in a 3 dB loss in performance. Experimental evaluation is carried out with a flexible and easy-to-use 2 x 2 MIMO platform at 2.4 GHz. Results show the excellent performance of the blind channel estimation technique in either Line-Of-Sight (LOS) and Non-LOS (NLOS) indoor scenarios.