IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 53, NO.

2, MARCH 2004

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BER Performance of Linear STBC From Orthogonal Designs Over MIMO Correlated Nakagami- Fading Channels

Guillem Femenias, Member, IEEE

AbstractThis paper presents the evaluation of the average bit error rate (BER) performance of linear spacetime block codes (STBC) from orthogonal designs over correlated identically fading channels. Starting from the distributed Nakagamimoment-generating function (MGF) of the multipath component signals at the antenna array elements, analytical expressions of the BER performance for both integral and nonintegral Nakagamifading parameters are derived. Closed-form expressions of the spatial cross-correlation function for mobile nonfrequency selective Nakagami- fading multiple-inputmultiple-output (MIMO) channels are obtained, which are valid for small angle-of-arrival (AOA) spread. In this expressions, various parameters of interest, such as the mean AOA of the signal, AOA spread, and array configurations, are all taken into account. The effects of antenna array configuration and the operating environment (mean AOA, AOA spread, Nakagami fading parameter) on the BER performance of the system are illustrated by several numerical examples. Index TermsAntenna array, correlated Nakagami fading channels, space diversity, spacetime block codes.

I. INTRODUCTION

N recent years, the application of antenna arrays for mobile radio communication systems has received much attention, as they improve signal quality, thereby increasing system coverage, capacity, and link quality [1][3]. These antenna arrays may be employed at both the transmitters and receivers in order to configure a multiple-inputmultiple-output (MIMO) mobile radio system. Transmitter diversity has traditionally been viewed as more difficult to exploit than receiver diversity, in part because the transmitter is assumed to know less about the channel than the receiver and in part due to the challenging signal design problem. The challenge of transmit diversity for the multiple fading channel has recently been met with several novel signal-processing and error-correction coding techniques. Prominent among these are spacetime coding methodologies, including spacetime trellis coding (STTC) [4], [5] and spacetime block coding (STBC) [6], [7], [11], which integrate the techniques of antenna array spatial diversity and channel coding.

Manuscript received April 15, 2003; revised September 29, 2003 and November 14, 2003. This work was supported in part by the Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnologa and Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER) under Grant TIC2001-0287, Spain. The author is with the Departament de Matemtiques i Informtica, Universitat de les Illes Balears, Balears 07011, Spain (e-mail: guillem.femenias@uib.es). Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TVT.2004.823475

As shown by Tarokh et al. in [4], STTC performs well in slowly fading environments, but has the drawback that decoding complexity grows exponentially with the number of antennas. The alternative multiantenna transmit diversity concept of STBC emerged in the work of Alamouti [6] and was further developed and put into a theoretical framework by Tarokh et al. in [7]. The essential feature of STBC is its inherent orthogonality, thus guaranteeing that a simple linear decoding technique provides the maximum likelihood result. In fact, Tarokh et al. in [7] showed that if the fades connecting pairs of transmit and receive antenna elements are uncorrelated, STBC offers a large increase in signal quality as compared with uncoded systems. While the aforementioned assumption of uncorrelated fading has been made in many previous works that explore the performance of STBC systems [6], [7], [11], there are several situations in which the fading is correlated among the channels. For example, in real propagation environments, physical constraints may not allow the use of antenna spacing that is required for independent fading across antenna elements. It is well known that, when the fades are correlated, the signal quality can be significantly worse than when the fades are uncorrelated. Initial work on the analysis of diversity with correlated fading channels was done by Pierce and Stein in [12], where they studied the special case of Rayleigh fading. The analysis of [12] was extended, for some special cases, to correlated Rician fading in [13] and [14]. Other work on extending the analysis in [12] has focused on the Nakagamifading model [15][20], a distribution that provides greater flexibility in matching experimental data collected in a variety of fading environments [21], [22]. One of the goals of this paper is to analytically investigate the effects of Nakagamifading correlation on the bit error rate (BER) performance of linear STBC based on multiple phase-shift keying (MPSK) and multiple quadrature amplitude modulation (MQAM) modulation schemes. Previous work on the performance evaluation of STBC over correlated Rayleigh-fading channels can be found, for example, in [23][26]. In general, the cross-correlation between the signals transmitted and received by transmitter and receiver antenna array elements can take on any arbitrary symmetrical structure, since the cross-correlation depends not only on the antenna array configuration but also on the operating environment, i.e., the mean angle of arrival (AOA) of incoming waves, the AOA spread, the spatial distribution of scatterers around the transmitter and receiver, etc. Building on the analytical framework developed by Luo et al. in [19], Shiu et al. in [31], and Abdi et al. in

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[32], another goal of this paper is the derivation of a closedform, easy-to-use, and mathematically tractable expression for the spatial cross correlation between the links of a time-selective MIMO Nakagami- wireless fading channel with multielement antenna arrays at both the transmitter and the receiver. The proposed model is a spatial generalization of the one-ring model first proposed by Clarke and Jakes in [33] and [34], respectively, and is appropriate in the fixed wireless communication context, where the base station (BS) is usually elevated and unobstructed by local scatterers and the mobile terminal (MT) is often surrounded by local scatterers. The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. In Section II, the system model under consideration is briefly described. The BER performance analysis of linear STBC based on MPSK and MQAM modulation schemes over generalized MIMO fading channels is provided in Section III. The general expressions obtained in Section III are particularized for the case of correlated identically distributed Nakagami-fading channels in Section IV. Analytical expressions are derived for both integral and nonintegral Nakagami- fading parameters, starting from the moment-generating function (MGF) of the multipath component signals at the antenna array elements. Closed-form expressions of the spatial cross-correlation function for mobile nonfrequency selective Nakagami- fading MIMO channels are obtained in Section V, in which various parameters of interest, such as the mean AOA of the signal and the AOA spread and array configurations, are all taken into account. In Section VI, numerical examples are presented in order to illustrate the effects of the antenna configuration and the operating environment on spatial correlation coefficients and on the BER performance of linear spacetime block codes in different Nakagami- fading channels. Finally, the paper is concluded in Section VII with a summary of the main results and contributions.

envelope with a probability distribution function (PDF) given by [21] (1) is the Gamma function, is the avwhere erage power gain of the channel between the th transmit and th receive antenna, and is the fading parameter that must , describing the fading severity. All channels satisfy channel matrix are collected into the

. . .

. . .

..

. . .

(2)

At the receiver, assuming the reception of the th block of coded symbols, the received signal at time epoch and receive antenna can be denoted as and is given by (3) is a zero-mean complex Gaussian noise with variance per dimension. Assuming perfect channel state information (CSI), the maximum likelihood (ML) receiver computes the decision metric [4], [7] (4) over all code words and decides in favor of the code word that . minimizes the sum Noting the column orthogonal characteristic of the matrix [7], the metric in (4) can be decomposed into parts , respectively that are only a function of , [8], [9]. Consequently, the minimization of (4) is equivalent to separately and the ML minimizing each decision metric for receiver chooses [10] (5) with (6) denotes the Frobenius norm1 of the matrix , where is a zero-mean complex Gaussian noise with variance per dimension and is a constant that depends on the STBC coding matrix; for example, for , , in [8] and for and in [8]. and
1The

where

II. SYSTEM MODEL In this paper, we consider a wireless communication system transmit antennas and receive antennas. consisting of During time epochs, the system transmits the th block of symbols, , which are taken from a complex signal constellation . The transmitted symbols are distributed between the antennas and time epochs according . The matrix to the code matrix are linear combinations of the symbols elements of and their conjugates. At each time epoch , signals , th entries of , , and which are the , are transmitted simultaneously through the transmit antennas. Since symbol periods are necessary to transmit symbols, the coding rate of the STBC is . We assume nonfrequency-selective channels with the same propagation delay between all pairs of transmit and receive antennas. The channel between the th transmit and th receive antenna, during the th block transmission, is denoted by , where the phase is uniformly distributed over and is a Nakagami distributed signal the range

Frobenius norm of an n 2 l matrix

k

A is defined as
j

tr(A A) =

where tr(1) and the superscript H denote the trace operator and the transpose conjugate of a matrix, respectively.

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Equation (5) can be simplified as (7) with (8) . From (8), it can be observed that where orthogonal STBC and and spacetime decoding transform a into an equivMIMO fading channel with channel matrix alent Gaussian single-inputsingle-output (SISO) channel with and a zero-mean complex Gaussian noise a channel gain with variance per dimension. III. BER PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS A. Conditional BER , the instantaneous signal-to-noise ratio Defining (SNR) per symbol at the output of the equivalent Gaussian SISO model can be calculated as (9) where

is the PDF of where random variable as [27]

. By defining the MGF of a

(14) the average BER of a linear STBC using MPSK or MQAM digital modulation schemes can be written as MPSK

(15) MQAM

(16)

IV. BER PERFORMANCE OVER CORRELATED IDENTICALLY DISTRIBUTED NAKAGAMIFADING CHANNELS (10) is the average transmitted energy per source symbol. As such, conditioned on the fading, the BER of a linear STBC from orthogonal designs using MPSK or MQAM digital modulation schemes is given by the following [28]. MPSK In the following derivation, we assume that each fading channel experiences the same extent of fading, i.e., for and . In addition, the average power gain is assumed to be identical for each fading for and . channel, i.e., In this case, it is well known that the marginal PDF of follows the Gamma distribution (17) Thus, is the sum of correlated Gamma variables. Now, following the approach outlined by Luo et al. in [19], it is straightforward to show that the MGF of is given by (18) where (12) (19) B. Average BER Average BER is obtained from (13) As stated by Luo et al. in [19], although the characteristic function in (18) has a very similar form as the MGF obtained by Aalo in [15, eq. (8)] or Lombardo et al. in [16, eq. (11)], is the complex component correlation each element of coefficient between the complex Gaussian component waves received at any two antennas, instead of the square root of is the identity matrix and is a positive definite covariance matrix with elements

(11) MQAM

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power correlation coefficients in [15] and [16]. The complex component correlation considered in this paper is the correlation between two field components, which allows the component correlation to be evaluated in terms of the antenna spacing, mean AOA and angular spread, etc. The correlation used in [15] and [16], representing the correlation between the instantaneous power of two received signals, is more convenient for the analysis of experimental data, where the correlation of the signal power can be easily measured from field data. be the set of distinct eigenvalues of where each Let has algebraic multiplicity such that . In this case, (18) can be expressed as [17], [18], [20] (20)

where (24) MQAM

(25) where (26)

where . Now, substituting the MGF corresponding to in (15) and (16) gives, respectively, the average linear space-time block code using MPSK BER of a or MQAM digital-modulation schemes. However, we identify two situations for which different strategies will be used. In the first case, we assume that the fading parameter is an integer and, using partial fractions, show that for an arbitrary channel covariance matrix, the MGF of can always be represented as a finite summation. This sum is then used to obtain the BER in a simple closed form. In the second case, we consider a nonintegral fading parameter and, using the GaussChebyshev quadrature rules [29], obtain a simple expression for the BER. A. Integral Fading Parameter With the assumption that the fading severity index is an integer and by using partial fractions, the MGF of can be written in a more desirable form (i.e., that facilitates the derivation of closed-form BER formulas in arbitrarily correlated fading environments) (21)

We next invoke the results of [18, App. 5A] to write

(27) with defined by (28) Combining the above results, it follows that MPSK

(29) where MQAM

(22) Substituting (21) in (15) and (16) gives MPSK

(30)

B. Nonintegral Fading Parameter (23) The method described in the previous section exploited the fact that, for an integral fading parameter, the MGF of the random variable can be expressed as a partial sum. This idea

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Fig. 1.

Geometrical configuration of a 2

2 2 MIMO channel with local scatterers around the MT.

for some the th derivative of . Notation . is used to denote

cannot be applied to the case involving a nonintegral fading parameter. Therefore, we have to take a different approach. Let us begin with (15) and (16). These expressions can be easily evaluated to any degree of accuracy by several numerical integration methods. In particular, the change of variables enables us to use the GaussChebyshev quadrature rules [29, eq. 25.4.38], which have the advantage that their abscissas and weights admit a closed-form expression. In this way, after some algebraic manipulations, we obtain MPSK

V. CHANNEL MODEL The most fundamental description of a narrowband linear, quasistationary, multipath medium in MIMO wireless systems is the impulse response from transmit antenna array element to receive antenna array element . Such a typical impulse response can be represented as the superposition of a large number of impulses [30] (34) is the number of impulses and and are, respectively, the strengths and delays of the paths between transmit and receive antenna array ele, we associate a representative ments. With the set such that delay (35) , In other words, the differences are much smaller than the reciprocal bandwidth of the transmitted signal. In a Nakagami- fading environment, all impulse compoindependent groups [19]. In each nents can be treated as group, there are , unresolvable paths, . The sum of these paths in such that each group forms the th resolved multipath component, i.e., where

(31) MQAM

(36) (32) where the set is formed by the elements of that belong to the th group. Assuming that the set of unresolvable paths is large, then, by invoking the central limit theorem, both and can be well approximated by independent Gaussian distributed random processes and, thus, the amis Rayleigh distributed and the phase plitude is uniformly distributed in the range .

where is a small positive integer and the remainder term can be expressed as [29, eq. 25.4.38] (33)

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Consider the multielement antenna system configuration shown in Fig. 1 [31], [32]. Obviously, in Fig. 1, we have uni(a 2 2 MIMO channel), form linear arrays with which constitutes the basic structure of multielement antenna systems with arbitrary array configurations. The MT receives the signal from a large number of surrounding local scatterers situated over a ring of radius , while the BS receives the signal through the narrow beamwidth . We assume that the waves are planar and only single scattering occurs. The th scatterer of , is the distance between the th group is represented by . Using the BS and the MT and, clearly, the channel model depicted in Fig. 1, the plane waves emitted from the th element of the BS antenna array travel over paths with different lengths and, after being scattered by the local scatterers around the MT, impinge the th array element of the MT from different directions. Mathematically, for the frequency nonselective communication link between the th element of the BS antenna array and the th element of the MT antenna array, the complex lowpass equivalent channel impulse can be expressed as response (37)

where (41) denotes the total power from the th element of the BS antenna array, scattered by all the scatterers toward the th element of the MT array. According to our hypothesis, there are a is very large. In this large number of scattering terms, i.e. , out of the total case, the small contribution of the scatterer , is proportional to . This is equal to the infinitesimal power coming from the differential with probability , i.e., angle (42) (see [34, p. 23]), where is the pdf of the AOA seen by the MT. Therefore, the sums in (40) can be expressed as integrals of the form, independent of [32], as

(43) where where

(38) and represent, respectively, the The parameters amplitude and the phase of the wave scattered toward the MT is the by the th scatterer of the th group of scatterers, distance between the th element of the BS antenna array and , represents the distance between the th the scatterer element of the MT antenna array and the scatterer , is the wavelength, and denotes the speed-of-light propagation. From (37) and (38), we have that

(44) with being the length of the path between the th element of the BS antenna array and the point of the ring of , and so on. scatterers determined by , (43) needs to be calculated numeriFor a given cally. However, the assumption of for many practical cases of interest, which also implies that is small, simplifies the equations drastically. In fact, following the approach outlined by Abdi et al. in [32], it is straightforward to show that for small

(39) consists of independent positive random variThe set . Furtherables with finite variances, independent of are independent more, it is reasonable to assume that and identically distributed random variables with uniform dis. Based on these statistical properties, the tributions over and can be written spatial cross correlation between as

(45) The approximate cross-correlation expression given in (45) . In this can be calculated for any angular PDF paper, we use the von Mises PDF [35][37] (46) is the zeroth-order modified Bessel function, accounts for the mean direction of AOA seen by the MT, and controls the width of AOA. For (isotropic scattering), the von Mises PDF becomes a uniform distribution ), while for (extremely (that is, where

(40)

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Fig. 3. Influence of the Nakagami-m fading parameter on the BER performance of a linear quaternary phase-shift keying (QPSK) spacetime block code with N , transmit antennas. BS antenna spacing d MT antenna spacing d : , fixed AOA spread = , and mean = . AOA at the BS 

=2 = 03 = 4

1 = 32

= 10

VI. NUMERICAL RESULTS In this section, we present a series of numerical examples to illustrate the effects of the antenna configuration and the operating environment on spatial correlation coefficients and on the BER performance of linear spacetime block codes in different Nakagami- fading channels. In all the numerical calculations, it has been assumed that the fading channels are normalized in the sense that . When using the GaussChebyshev quadrature rules, it has been assumed a parameter . A. 2 2 MIMO System

Fig. 2. Absolute value of  versus BS and MT antenna spacing for a 2 around the MT. (a)  MIMO system with isotropic scattering  = and (b)  = , = . = ,

4 1= 4

( = 0) = 32 1 = 16

22 =

nonisotropic scattering) the von Mises PDF becomes a Dirac delta function, concentrated at . Using (46) in (45), we obtain the following after some algebraic manipulations [32]:

(47) where and . As an example, let us assume a simple 2 2 MIMO system with isotropic scattering around the MT. In this particular case, the von Mises PDF distribution becomes a uniform distribution and, thus, the cross-correlation between antennas . Figs. 2(a) and (b) show the absolute does not depend on value of versus BS and MT antenna spacing for different and . It is clear that increasing separation values of between the antenna array elements reduces their correlation and that the separation required for a given correlation coefficient decreases quickly as the AOA spread increases. It is also apparent that the antenna spacing for low correlation increases as the system configuration goes from the broadside case to the inline case [38].

As an example, let us again assume a 2 2 MIMO system with isotropic scattering around the MT. Our aim with this simple example is to analyze the influence of the Nakagami- fading parameter and the effect of antenna spacing on the BER performance of a linear MPSK/MQAM spacetime block code with transmit antennas, as well as its sensitivity to the AOA spread and to the mean AOA. Fig. 3 illustrates the influence of the Nakagami- fading parameter on the average BER performance of a linear QPSK spacetime block code with transmit antennas versus the average . We have assumed a BS antenna spacing , an MT antenna spacing , a fixed AOA spread , and a mean AOA at the BS . As expected, the average BER performance deteriorates as the fading becomes more severe; that is, as the Nakagani- fading decreases. Fig. 4 shows the effects of MT antenna spacing for a fixed AOA spread on the BER performance of a linear QPSK spacetime block code with transmit antennas versus the average . It also illustrates the effects of AOA spread for a fixed dB on the BER performance of a linear QPSK spacetime block code with transmit antennas versus MT antenna spacing. It has been assumed a BS antenna spacing , a mean AOA at the BS , and a fixed fading parameter . At a , the system is almost equivalent to receiving the same signal twice, but without doubling the transmitting power. A strong correlation between these two received signals

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Fig. 4. Effects of MT antenna spacing (for a fixed AOA spread = ) dB) on the BER performance of a and AOA spread (for a fixed E =N linear QPSK spacetime block code with N transmit antennas. BS antenna , mean AOA at the BS  = , and fading parameter spacing d m .

=1

= 10

= 10

=2

1 = 32

= 4

Sensitivity to the AOA spread (for a mean AOA at the BS  dB) of the average BER performance of a linear QPSK spacetime block code with N transmit , MT antenna spacing d : , antennas. BS antenna spacing d and fading parameter m .

=4) and to the mean AOA (for a fixed E =N

Fig. 6.

=1

= 10

= 10

=2

=03

Fig. 5. Effects of BS antenna spacing (for a fixed AOA spread = ) dB) on the BER performance of a and AOA spread (for a fixed E =N linear QPSK spacetime block code with N transmit antennas. MT antenna : , mean AOA at the BS  = , and fading parameter spacing d m .

=1

=03

= 10 =2

1 = 32

= 4

Fig. 7. Average BER performance of linear MPSK and MQAM spacetime block codes with N , transmit antennas. BS antenna spacing d : , AOA spread MT antenna spacing d = , mean AOA at the = , and fading parameter m : . BS 

= 4

=2

=03

1 = 32 =05

= 10

makes them suffer essentially the same fading and no diversity reception is gained. At a , the received signal pair is almost independent and the system practically achieves full diversity reception gain. As the AOA spread decreases, a larger antenna spacing is needed in order to obtain better average BER performance. That is, the lack of high AOA spread, as in an outdoor rural environment, can be compensated for by increasing antenna separation. However, regardless of the AOA spread, once the MT antenna spacing is increased beyond or , the system approaches its maximum BER performance without further improvement. At the BS side, Fig. 5 illustrates the effects of BS antenna spacing for a fixed AOA spread on the BER performance of a linear QPSK spacetime block code with transmit antennas versus the average . It also shows the effects of AOA spread for a fixed dB on the BER performance of a linear QPSK spacetime block code with transmit antennas versus BS antenna spacing. It has been assumed that an MT antenna spacing , a mean AOA at the BS , and a fixed fading parameter . At , a strong correlation between the two transmitted signals makes them suffer essentially the same

fading and no spacetime coding gain is achieved. It can also be observed that, for a fixed AOA spread, once the BS antenna spacing is increased beyond a certain value (approximately for ), the system approaches its maximum BER performance without further relevant improvement. Furthermore, as expected, a decrease in the AOA spread redounds on the need for a larger BS antenna spacing in order to obtain better average BER performance. Maximum average BER performance for , for is obtained with , and so on. Fig. 6 shows the sensitivity to the AOA spread for a mean AOA at the BS and to the mean AOA for a fixed dB of the average BER performance of a linear QPSK spacetime block code with transmit antennas. A BS antenna spacing , an MT antenna spacing , and a fixed fading parameter have been assumed. As shown in Fig. 6, for fixed MT and BS antenna spacing, the correlation between antennas increases as the AOA spread decreases. Thus, decreasing the AOA spread redounds to a deterioration of the average BER performance. It can also be observed that a gradual degradation when the mean AOA deviates from the broadside direction. The degradation is relatively

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Fig. 8. BS antenna array configurations. (a) LUA. (b) CUA.

Fig. 9. Average BER performance of a linear QPSK spacetime block code for both linear and circular uniform arrays as a function of N and  (for a ) and as a function of N and D BS antenna configuration with D (assuming, in each case, the optimum value of  ). MT antenna spacing d : , AOA spread = , fading parameter m , and E =N dB.

= 03 = 10

= 10 1 = 32

=1

Fig. 10. Effects of BS antenna array configuration (LUA and CUA) on the averaged BER (over  ) performance of a linear QPSK spacetime block code with N transmit antennas versus the average E =N . MT antenna spacing d : , AOA spread = , and fading parameters m and 2.

=3 =03

1 = 32

=1

small for low AOA spread values and becomes very important as the AOA spread increases. Average BER performance of linear MPSK and MQAM spacetime block codes is shown in Fig. 7 for a 2 2 MIMO system with a BS antenna spacing , an MT antenna spacing , an AOA spread , a mean AOA at the BS , and a fading parameter . B. MIMO Systems

Now, let us assume a BS antenna array with more than two antennas. Two possible multiple-antenna placements are linear uniform arrays (LUA) and circular uniform arrays (CUA), which are illustrated in Fig. 8. Fig. 9 shows the behavior of the average BER performance of a linear QPSK spacetime block code for both linear and circular uniform arrays as a function of and (for a BS antenna configuration with ) and as a function of and (assuming, in each case, the optimum value of ). It has been assumed an MT antenna spacing , a fixed AOA spread , a fading parameter , and dB. As can be seen, the performance of a system is strongly dependent on the MT position with respect to the BS. In particular, when , all antennas of an LUA are in a highly correlated situation and, consequently, a very poor average BER performance is obtained. Although a CUA (with ) ensures that not every

antenna is ever in a highly correlated situation, there are some values of that produce a high correlation between two or more antennas in the CUA, thus drastically reducing the BER performance of the system. Furthermore, as is clearly shown, using an antenna array with a high number of elements and, thus, a spacetime block code with a high is not the optimum solution if the array is very compact and a sufficient distance between antenna elements cannot be warranted. Obviously, as increases, the antenna spacing decreases and the branches become more correlated. In fact, examining the results in Fig. 9, it can be concluded that, with being optimum, the best uniform array configuration is an LUA/CUA with if , an LUA with if , and an LUA with if . Under the assumption of being uniformly distributed over the interval , the averaged BER (over ) can be expressed as (48) No analytical solution is available for evaluating the integral in (48). However, due to the bounded and continuous nature of the integrand, the Riemann sum approximation can be applied [39]. Fig. 10 illustrates the effects of BS antenna array configuration on the averaged BER (over ) performance of a linear

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QPSK spacetime block code with transmit antennas versus the average . It has been assumed an MT antenna , an AOA spread , and fading spacing parameters and 2. In general, the CUA ensures that not all antennas are in a highly correlated situation like what can and, consequently, gives happen with an LUA when the better averaged BER (over ) performance.

VII. CONCLUSION This paper has presented the analytical evaluation of the average BER performance of linear spacetime block codes, based on MPSK and MQAM modulation schemes, over correlated Nakagami- MIMO fading channels. Analytical expressions have been derived for both integral and nonintegral Nakagami- fading parameters, starting from the MGF of the multipath component signals at the antenna array elements. Flexible and mathematically tractable closed-form expressions of the spatial cross-correlation function for mobile nonfrequency selective Nakagami- fading MIMO channels have been obtained, in which various parameters of interest such as the mean AOA of the signal, the AOA spread, and array configurations have been all taken into account. This model has been used to explore the effects of antenna array configuration and the operating environment (mean AOA, AOA spread, Nakagami-fading parameter) on the BER performance of the system. Numerical results show that BER performance of STBC decreases as the AOA spread decreases. Such a loss may be compensated by increasing the antenna spacing or by modifying the array configuration. Also, by using an LUA, a gradual degradation when the mean AOA deviates from the broadside direction can be observed. The degradation is relatively small for low AOA spread values and becomes very important as the AOA spread increases. In general, the CUA ensures that not all antennas are in a highly correlated situation such as what can and, consequently, gives happen with an LUA when the better averaged BER (over ) performance. An important result is that increasing the order of the STBC is not the optimum solution if the array is very compact and a sufficient distance between antenna elements cannot be warranted. In fact, the optimum value of depends on both the antenna array configuration and the operating environment.

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Guillem Femenias (M91) received the engineer of telecommunication and Ph.D. degrees from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC), Barcelona, Spain, in 1987 and 1991, respectively. From 1987 to 1994, he was a Researcher at UPC, where he became an Associate Professor in 1990. Since 1995, he has been an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Informatics, University of the Balearic Islands (UIB), Barcelona, Spain. His current research interests and activities span the fields of digital communications theory with applications and wireless personal communication systems, with particular emphasis on third-generation systems, adaptive modulation techniques, diversity systems, and digital communications over fading channels. He is the author of articles in international journals on these topics, as well as of communications to international conferences. He is responsible for several projects concerned with the design of IP-based broadband wireless local area networks funded by the governments of Spain and the Balearic Islands.