Performance Evaluation of a Space Time Trellis Coded MIMO-OFDM Wireless Communication System

In wireless communication systems, popularly known as MIMO (Multiple-Input Multiple-Output) technology, the use of multiple antennas at the transmitter and receiver has rapidly gained in popularity over the past decade due to its powerful performance-enhancing capabilities. This research incorporates a comprehensive BER simulation study undertaken on the effectiveness of a Space-Time Trellis Coded multiple-input multiple-output orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (MIMO-OFDM) communication system. The STTC encoded MIMO-OFDM Communication system under present study has integrated two digital modulation schemes (QAM, QPSK) over fading (Rayleigh and Rician) and Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) channels for two transmitting and two receiving antennas. Minimum Mean-Square-Error (MMSE) channel equalization algorithm has been implemented here. Computer simulations are performed with synthetically generated data from audio signal and the results on bit error rate (BER) reveals that the MIMO-OFDM system with STTC coding under QAM modulation technique is highly effective to combat inherent interferences under Rayleigh, Rician fading and Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) channels. It is projected from the study that the retrieving performance of the communication system degrades with the lowering of the signal to noise ratio (SNR).