Spatial Multiplexing and Diversity Gain in OFDM-Based MIMO Systems
Haideh M. Karkhanechi & Bernard C. Levy
Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
University of California Davis
Davis, CA. 95616
Abstract--- Multiple transmit and receive antennas can be
used with orthogonal frequency division multiplexing to improve
performance and transmission rate. In this paper we investigate
trade offs between different techniques in broadband OFDM-
based MIMO systems for achieving full diversity or maximum
spatial multiplexing gain. The basic model of OFDM-based spa-
tial multiplexer is very suitable for high data rate transmission,
and if combined with other techniques such as channel coding or
space time coding can provide desired diversity and spatial
multiplexing gain.
I. INTRODUCTION
In broadband environment combined orthogonal frequency
division multiplexing (OFDM) and space time processing is
an effective method to combat fading and achieve high data
rate communication. In OFDM, using IFFT at the transmitter
and FFT at the receiver, transforms the broadband frequency
selective channel into a set of ISI-free narrow-band subchan-
nels, so that each subchannel can be easily equalized at the
receiver. To avoid inter-symbol interference a cyclic prefix is
added at the transmitter and removed at the receiver prior to
detection. The main problem is that if a subcarrier falls in a
deep fade or channel null, all the information carried by that
subcarrier is affected and results in an error burst that greatly
degrades the system performance. In order to deal with bad
sub-carriers, techniques such as channel coding or changing
subcarrier positions at the transmitter (requires CSI at the
transmitter) can be used.
Multicarrier space-time processing allows multi-transmit
and multi-receive communication through multiple parallel
sub-channels at high data rate that can provide diversity gain
and spatial multiplexing gain. Space time block codes with
two transmit antennas, or orthogonal codes for arbitrary num-
ber of transmit antennas [1,2] achieve full diversity gain and
linear low complexity decoding at the expense of lower
transmission rate. Diversity gain is achieved by sending the
same information through different paths, whereas spatial
multiplexing gain is achieved when each transmit antenna,
transmits different information that results in higher transmis-
sion rate [4,6]. In a MIMO OFDM system, both diversity and
spatial multiplexing gains can be achieved but a higher diver-
sity gain is achievable at the expense of sacrificing the spatial
multiplexing gain (lower transmission rate). In this paper we
investigate different techniques for improving system per-
formance that demonstrate trade-offs and differences between
0-7803-8197-1/03/$17.00 (c)2003 IEEE
spatial-multiplexing gain and diversity gain. For simplicity
simulations are done for (2,2) and (2,1) systems where the
channel is assumed to be known at the receiver through
OFDM training blocks [9].
II. OFDM-BASED MIMO SYSTEM WITH FULL SPATIAL
MULTIPLEXING GAIN
In this section we describe the system model of an OFDM
based spatial multiplexer (OFDM-SM) for high data rate
transmission, and deal with the problem of bad sub-carriers in
order to improve system performance.
A. SYSTEM MODEL
We consider a (2,2) OFDM-SM, where each transmit an-
tenna transmits different OFDM symbols. This system can
achieve half diversity gain with full spatial multiplexing gain
compared to SISO OFDM. The broadband fading channel is
modeled as a tapped-delay-line (polynomial model) [8] be-
tween transmit antenna i and receive antenna j with K taps,
the channel impulse response can be written as:
hij (t ) = ∑l =1α ij (l )δ (t − mlTs )
K
(1)
where α ij (l ) is the complex coefficient, with zero-mean
Gaussian distribution, of the l th tap with integer delay ml
and sampling period of Ts. After matched filtering (raised-
cosine) and sampling the channel is defined as sum of K con-
volutions of the channel coefficients with the pulse shaping
filter response:
gij (n) = ∑l =1α ij (l ) f ps (n − mlTs )
K
(2)
At the transmitter the incoming bit-stream goes through a
serial to parallel demux and is divided to M sub-streams.
Each sub-stream goes through an OFDM modulator to make
M OFDM symbols. In each sub-stream after mapping, modu-
lating and taking N-point IFFT, a cyclic prefix is prepended
(copy of at least K samples) to each OFDM symbol to avoid
ISI due to channel delay spread. The received signal is the
superposition of all M transmitted OFDM blocks going
through channel plus noise. At the receiver detection is done
after the OFDM demodulator removes the cyclic prefix and
performs FFT. The detection is done at each subcarrier by a
simple one-tap matrix equalizer.
 The received signal at antenna p can be written as: Parameters Value

rp = ∑i=1 Gip xi + n p
M System bandwidth 20MHz
(3)
Subcarrier frequency spacing .3125MHz
where M is number of transmit antennas, the vector xi is the Number of data subcarriers 48
FFT size 64
OFDM block transmitted from antenna i, vector Gip is the
channel frequency response from each transmit antenna to Table 1: The conditions for the simulations
receive antenna p, and vector n p is additive complex white
III. OFDM-BASED MIMO SYSTEM WITH FULL DIVERSITY GAIN
gaussian noise added to received vector rp at pth receiver. In a
(2,2) system the received signal at antenna p for the k-th fre- In OFDM-SM were each antenna transmits different sym-
quency tone, can be written as: bol, we do not achieve full diversity gain. But in STBC-
rp [k ] = ∑i=1 Gip [k ]xi [k ] + n p [k ]
2 OFDM by adding space time block coder full diversity gain
(4) can be achieved at the expense of lower transmission rate.
where Gip [k ] is the channel frequency response for the k-th The block diagram of this system is shown in Figure 2.
(a)
tone corresponding to transmit antenna i and receive antenna Space- IFFT add
Input
guard
p. Note that channel is assumed to be time invariant. Signal
Time
Coder add
IFFT
B. CODING GAIN guard

(b)
Even though OFDM modulation interleaves data across
rem.
multiple subcarriers, but the problem remains when a sub- guard FFT Space- Output
Signal
Time
carrier falls in a deep fade or channel null. In order to combat Decoder
the effect of bad sub-carriers that results in burst errors, a rem.
guard FFT
serial outer Reed Solomon encoder is added to the OFDM-
SM for improving system performance (the RS codes are par- Figure 2: Block diagram of (2,2) space time
ticularly useful for burst error correction). Figure 1 compares coded OFDM, (a) transmitter (b) receiver.
the uncoded (2,2) OFDM-SM with the RS precoded OFDM-
SM. At bit error probability of 10-4 the (63,31) RS code
In STBC-OFDM with transmit diversity, a block of input
shows 7dB coding gain and (31,19) RS code shows 5dB cod-
stream, is demuxed to M sub-streams (M is the number of
ing gain. Also note that at bit error rate of 10-5 the uncoded
transmit antennas), after mapping words to subcarriers, and
(2,2) OFDM spatial multiplexer has diversity gain of two and
modulation the output of each sub-stream is then mapped to a
spatial multiplexing gain of two where at each time interval
space-time block coder. Using Alamouti’s scheme in a sys-
two different symbols are transmitted from both transmit an-
tem with two transmit antennas, the space time block coder
tennas.
takes two input block, of s1 and s2 and outputs the following:
 s1 − s2* 
 
 s2 s1* 

where the two columns are transmitted in two consecu-

Figure 1: BER comparison of coded/uncoded
OFDM-SM (differential bpsk) over frequency
selective fading channel.
tive time intervals. The signals transmitted from both
antennas for the k-th frequency tone at time slots n and
n+1 form Alamouti’s code. Before transmition IFFT is
applied to each si block. At the receiver after removing
guard-time, mapping and performing FFT, the space
time block decoder, decodes the superposition of two
transmitted signals over two time slots. For a (2,1) sys-
tem the received signal over time slot 1 and 2 can be
written as:
r1 = H 1s1 + H 2 s 2 + w1 number of antennas other techniques such as changing subcar-
(5) rier positions at the transmitter can be employed that requires
r2 = H s + H s + w2
*
2 2
*
2 1 channel knowledge at the transmitter.
where w j is zero-mean complex AWGN with variance σ w2 .
The vector-matrix form at the k-th frequency tap can be writ- REFERENCES
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 2
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Figure 3: BER comparison of OFDM systems

(differential bpsk) over frequency selective
fading channel.

IV. CONCLUSION

In this paper we investigate and compare performance of

MIMO OFDM system based on diversity gain and spatial
multiplexing gain. Even though basic (2,2) OFDM spatial
multiplexer can achieve spatial multiplexing gain of two
(twice transmission rate of SISO OFDM), but it can only
achieve half the diversity gain of STBC-OFDM. Adding
space-time block coder allows OFDM system to achieve full
diversity gain at the expense of lower spatial multiplexing
gain. The STBC-OFDM system with transmit diversity has a
simple structure but the operational system complexity in-
creases and the transmission rate decreases as number of
transmit antennas increases. Also for larger number of trans-
mit antennas, the channel needs to stay constant for longer
period of time. In order to improve system performance and
achieve both spatial multiplexing and diversity gain for larger