Journal of Theoretical and Applied Information Technology

2005 - 2008 J ATIT. All rights reserved.

www.jatit.org

1075

PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT OF MC-CDMA SYSTEM
THROUGH DSTBC SITE DIVERSITY

1
N.KUMARATHARAN,
2
P.DANANJAYAN, AND
3
M.PADMAVATHY
1
Research Scholar,
2
Professor and Head,
3
P.G. Student
Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering
Pondicherry Engineering College, Pondicherry-605014, India
E-mail: [email protected]


ABSTRACT

Multi-carrier code division multiple access (MC-CDMA) systems receive a great deal of attention due to
their great potential in achieving high data rates in wireless communication. Nevertheless, when
transmission over fading channel multi-cell interference occurs and this degrades the performance of the
system. Site diversity technique is applied to the system to overcome this problem. Due to non
orthogonality of spreading codes multi-cell interference is not completely eradicated. In this paper space
time block code (STBC) site diversity with multiple input multiple output technique (MIMO) is proposed to
improve the performance of MC-CDMA systems and is extended to differential space time block codes
(DSTBC). Investigation is done with combining techniques under Rayleigh channel conditions. Simulation
results shows that DSTBC outperforms STBC site diversity.
Keywords: MC-CDMA, MIMO, STBC, DSTBC

1. INTRODUCTION

Broadband wireless access for evolving mobile
internet and multimedia services are driving a
surge of research on future wireless communication
systems, which have to be highly spectral efficient
in order to support multi-user access and high data
rates. Therefore, MC-CDMA formed by combining
orthogonal frequency division multiplexing
(OFDM) with code division multiple accesses
(CDMA) became significant research topics [1-3].
The former is well suited for high data rate
applications in frequency selective fading channels
and the later is a multiplexing technique where
number of users is simultaneously available to
access a channel. With its capability of
synchronous transmission, MC-CDMA is suitable
for downlink of cellular communication systems
[4]. High data rate MC-CDMA systems can
additionally employ MIMO techniques, e.g.,
Alamouti codes and STBC [3].

Data transmission involves spreading operations
which are carried out by short channelisation code
and long scrambling code. Short channelisation
code helps in separating the signals of different
users present within the cell and long scrambling
code mitigates the effects of interference produced
by users belonging to other cells. However, the
scrambling codes are generally not orthogonalised
among cells. Therefore, since the signals from other
cells cannot be orthogonalised to the signals of its
own cell, multi-cell interference exists. In high data
rate transmission system over frequency selective
fading channel, multi-cell interference results in
degradation of bit-error rate (BER) and this
characteristic affects the performance of MC-
CDMA systems.

Site diversity technique has been proposed for
realizing CDMA and OFDM systems to minimize
multi-cell interference [5-7]. Site diversity system
transmits encoded signals from several base
stations and these signals are combined at the
receiver with decoding operation. This method does
not have inter-cell interference. Scrambling codes
are assigned to each base station to maintain
orthogonality among the signals between the cells
and reduces interference among them. The same
technique is applied to MC-CDMA system. In this
work STBC and DSTBC with multiple antennas are
used in the base stations and also exploiting several
base stations the site diversity is obtained.
Moreover, by using various combining techniques
the performance of the system is analyzed.




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2. STBC SITE DIVERSITY TECHNIQUE
FOR MC-CDMA SYSTEM

STBC site diversity technique encodes STBC
data to several base stations considering base
stations as the antenna branches of STBC [8].
Encoding is performed by two adjacent symbols
and it is assumed that the j
th
symbol is S
j
and the
next symbol is S
j+1
, where j =2n and n is an
integer. The encoded pattern of branch 1, x
1
, and
that of branch 2, x
2
, is given by
1 1 1
( ); ( )
j j j j
x S t t S t t
+ +
= = =
2 1 1
( ); ( )
j j j j
x S t t S t t

+ +
= = = (1)

where t is the symbol time, t
j
is the j
th
symbol time.
In the above example, the symbols are encoded
between the adjacent symbols. These patterns are
assigned to several base stations and are transmitted
simultaneously. At the receiver, the signals are
received and combined with different path loss and
different fading fluctuation. The received signals
j
r ,
j+1
r are shown as follows,

*
j A j B j+1 j j
r = S - S +n (t = t )
*
j+1 A j+1 B j j+1 j+1
r = S + S +n (t = t ) (2)

where
A
and
B
are the channel responses of the
signals from base station A and base station B
respectively and
j
n is the noise. STBC decoding is
performed to the signals from both base stations to
obtain diversity gain and the data stream is
separated at the receiver [9].

Configuration for multiple antenna STBC MC-
CDMA system transmitter and receiver are shown
in Fig.1 and Fig.2 respectively for the downlink
case. At the transmitter the signals of each branch is
transmitted from each base station. So the base
stations has two pairs of STBC encoded pattern for
site diversity as one base station has two adjacent
base stations when linear cell system is considered.
Therefore two spreading parts should be prepared
and the assignment of channelisation and
scrambling codes are done as given in [10].The
transmitter consists of information source which
contains the data of multi-user. With these data,
STBC coding, spreading and OFDM modulation
functions are carried out. The OFDM is realized
through IFFT operation and cyclic prefix data is
added to it.

The multi-user matrix is denoted as
x=[x
1
..x
n
..x
N
] and includes the information of
all the users.
where x
n = [
x
1,n. . . .
x
j,n. . .
x
Nu,n]
T
is a vector of length
N
u
.


N
u
is the number of users,
N is the number of transmitted symbol
vectors,
[.]
T
denotes the transpose operation.
In case of N
t =
2, 3 transmit antennas, the STBC G
2
,
G
3
are used respectively [7]. For the multi-user
case, the coded sequences are defined by

*
2
1 *
2
*
2 1
x x
G
x x


=


(3)

* * * *
1 2 4 1 1 2 4 1
* * * *
3 2 1 4 3 2 1 4 3
* * * *
3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2
*
x x x x x x x x
G x x x x x x x x
x x x x x x x x


=





(4)

where [.]* denotes the complex conjugate operation
Since L time slots are used to transmit N
symbols, the rate R of the code is defined by R=
N/L. Hence, the rate of G
2
is one and the rate of G
3

is . The L
th
column of
*
Nt
G

represents the
transmitted symbols at time slot l while the t
th
row
of
*
Nt
G represents the transmitted symbols from the
antenna t. It can be noted that for
*
3
G the last four
columns are the complex conjugate of the first four
columns. After STBC coding, the multi-user coded
sequences
*
Nt
G

isspreaded over each STBC coded
symbol as with classical MC-CDMA. It is
considered that the lengths of the spreading
sequences is equal to Lc. and are orthogonal. Here
it is assumed that L
c
N
c
, where N
c
is the number of
sub-carriers of the OFDM and N
u
users are
transmitted with the same power. In the case of
synchronous downlink, the data modulated
spreading codes of the N
u
users are added. Then,
the multi-carrier modulation is easily performed by
an IFFT.

The receiver consists of OFDM demodulation
which performs the operation of FFT. The
demodulated OFDM signals are decoded and
equalized before despreading. Since STBC is
carried out on L OFDM symbols, the receiver has
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2005 - 2008 J ATIT. All rights reserved.

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1077

to deal with L successive symbols as a whole. The
assumptions for this process are given as below:
i. Frequency non-selective Rayleigh fading per
sub-carrier and time invariance during L symbols is
assumed to permit the recombination of symbols.
ii. There exists uncorrelated channels from each
transmit antenna t to each receive antenna r.
iii. Ideal time and frequency interleaving.
iv. Complex channel fading coefficients are
independent between each sub-carrier K.
This has the advantage of giving the asymptotical
performance of the system, since optimal spatial
and frequency diversity is obtained. In the MIMO
case, when STBC is used, the signal received
during L adjacent OFDM symbols is equal to


*
r r Nt r
R H CG N = + (5)

where R
r =
[r
ir
. . . r
lr
. . . r
Lr
] is a N
t
L
c
L matrix of
theL received signals r
lr
at the r
th
antenna, with r
lr
is
the vector of the L
c
sub-carriers received at time l
C is the spreading code
H
r
=diag(

H
ir
. . H
lr
. . H
Lr
) is the diagonal
channel matrix with L received signals of length
N
t
L
c
N
t
L
c


*
Nt
G

is the N
t
L
u
L matrix of multi-user coded
sequences
N
r
is N
t
L
c
L matrix of the L noise vector.
Then, STBC decoding operation is performed as,
G
Nt
r 1st row
with N
t
=2, 3
For instance with N
t
=2,
1
1
2
2
r
r st row
r
r
G
r

=


(6)
This process should be performed on each receiving
antenna r = 1,2,Nr. Then NNu LLc
equalization matrix G
Nt
Gr
is obtained for each
receive antenna by applying equalization
coefficients matrices G
tr
and G
Nt
which are used at
the transmitter. G
tr
is a diagonal matrix containing
the equalization coefficients g
tr,k
, for the channel tr
(t {1,2,3,4}, r {1,2}). As a result, these
signals have the diversity gain of STBC and the
orthogonality among site diversity users between
base station A and B are maintained. Only one
spreading code pattern is assigned to each base
station and the orthogonality of users in the cell are
maintained even if non site diversity users exist in
the cell.

Figure1 Block diagram of STBC diversity for MC-CDMA transmitter


Figure 2 Block diagram of STBC diversity for MC-CDMA receiver

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3. DSTBC SITE DIVERSITY TECHNIQUE
FOR MC-CDMA SYSTEM

Recent advances in communicating across
multiple-antenna wireless communication links
show that these links can support very high data
rates with low error probabilities, especially when
the wireless channel response is known at the
receiver. However, the assumption that the channel
is known is questionable in a rapidly changing
mobile environment, or when multiple transmitting
antennas are employed [11]. A new class of signals
called space-timesignals are proposed that is well-
tailored for Rayleigh flat-fading channels where
neither the transmitter nor the receiver knows the
fading coefficients. The space-time signals are
suited particularly well to piecewise-constant
fading models. The signals are modified in order to
work when the fading condition changes
continuously. The modified signals are denoted as
differential space-time modulation and achieve full-
antenna diversity and are easily implemented.
Differential phase-shift keying (DPSK) has long
been used in single-antenna unknown-channel links
when the channel has a phase response that is
approximately constant from one time sample to the
next. Differential modulation encodes the
transmitted information into phase differences from
symbol to symbol. The receiver decodes the
information in the current symbol by comparing its
phase to the phase of the previous symbol. DPSK is
widely used because many continuously fading
channels change little between successive time
samples. In fact, many continuously fading
channels are approximately constant for a time
interval T often much larger than two samples [12,
13].

For differential space time modulation (DSTM),
consider a multiple input single output (MISO)
system with t transmit antennas. Let the group =
{G
1
,..,G
N
} where members of G are defined by

t
= =
T T
t t t
G G G G I (7)
and {.}
T

denotes conjugate transpose. With the
group thus defined, and assuming a simple bit-to-
matrix mapping, the rate for DSTM using group
codes is
=
2
1
R log (N) b/s Hz
t
(8)
where, N is the number of elements in .
The idea behind DSTM is that the matrix group
codes can be differentially encoded much like
symbols in a DPSK modulator. In order to send a
block G
k
, the standard encoding equation is

k k - 1 k
C = C G (9)
where, k = 1,2, ......,K , G
k
represents data bits
mapped from group G and C
k
is the encoded block
that is actually transmitted at time k. C
0
is an
initialization matrix that is not used to transmit data
and can be any t t matrix that satisfies C
0
C
0
t
= tI.
Fig.3 shows how the elements of the encoded
blocks C
k
are interpreted in space and time.


1 - j

j 1






Figure 3 Time and space mapping of the matrix
elements for differentially encoded blocks

After encoding and transmission, received blocks
can be expressed as,

k k k k
Y = HC a + w (10)

where, k = 1, 2, .. .. .. , K
H is the channel coefficient matrix

1 2
[ (2 1) (2 1)]
T
k
a a k a k = and

1
(2 1) a k ,
2
(2 1) a k are Guassian
process
2 1 2
[ ]
T
k k k
w w w

= is a noise vector and

2 1 k
w

,
2k
w are zero mean complex
Guassian random variables

When channel state information (CSI) is not
available at the receiver, the maximum likelihood
(ML) detector for G
k
based only on the two most
recent blocks Y
k
and Y
k-1
is

T
k k k -1
G
G = arg max Re Tr {GY Y } (11)
which represents the standard decoding equation
for DSTM. The fact that G
k
is estimated from the
received data without CSI is the key advantage of
this encoding strategy. For coherent modulation,
encoding is often used to decrease the number of bit
Antenna 1
Antenna 2
Time slots
1 2
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1079

errors per given symbol error. The idea behind
encoding is, observing that when a symbol is
improperly detected, it is most likely to be wrongly
detected as one of the symbols closest to (in a
Euclidean sense) the actual transmitted symbol
[13]. Therefore, data bits should be mapped to
symbols such that there is only one bit different
between nearest neighbors in the symbol
constellation. This maximizes the probability that
there is only one bit error for each symbol error.

4. SIMULATION RESULTS

The proposed system is simulated in MATLAB
and the simulation parameters are given in Table
1. Figure 4 shows the BER performance of the
system with and without diversity. The diversity
technique uses the conventional Alamoutis code.
Figure4 clearly indicates the improvement in
performance with the use of diversity technique
under Rayleigh fading channel.

Table1. Simulation parameters

The system is simulated with STBC and DSTBC
using three types of combining techniques [14, 15]
and the performance is obtained. Simulation is also
carried out for each combining technique by
varying the transmitting antennas. Figure 5 shows
the performance of STBC diversity over MIMO
MC-CDMA system under selective combining
technique with varying number of antennas. It can
be noticed that when the number of antennas are
increased, the symbol error rate (SER) is
decreased. Two, four and six antennas are used to
simulate the performance. When the number of
antennas is increased the error rate reduces
gradually as maximum use of diversity exploitation
is made and the error rate reduction can be easily
witnessed. Performance of the system with equal
gain combining and maximal ratio combining
technique is shown in
0 5 10 15
10
-7
10
-6
10
-5
10
-4
10
-3
10
-2
10
-1
10
0
SNR (dB)
B
E
R
No Diversity
With Diversity

Figure 4 Performance of the system with and without
diversity


Figure 5 Performance of the system using STBC with
selective combining technique

Parameters Details
Symbol length 64
No. of sub-
carriers
124
Channel
estimation
Perfect estimation
Channelisaton
code
Walsh-Hadamard code of
length 63
Scrambling code Random code of length
63
Channel Rayleigh fading channel
with AWGN floor
Combining
techniques
Selective, equal gain and
maximal ratio combining
No. of antennas 2, 4 and 6
Modulation 16 QAM, DPSK
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1080


Figure 6 Performance of the system using STBC with
equal gain combining technique


Figure 7 Performance of the system using STBC with
maximal ratio combining technique

Figure 8 Performance of the system using DSTBC with
selective combining technique


Figure 9 Performance of the system using DSTBC with
equal gain combining technique

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
10
-5
10
-4
10
-3
10
-2
10
-1
10
0
E
b
/N
o
(dB)
S
E
R
MRC
EGC
SC

Figure 10 Performance of the system using DSTBC with
different combining techniques for 4 antennas


Figure 11 Performance of the system using STBC
and DSTBC with selective combining
technique for 4 antennas

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Figure 12 Performance of the system using STBC and
DSTBC with equal gain combining
technique for 4 antennas


Figure 13 Performance of the system using STBC and
DSTBC with maximal ratio combining
technique for 4 antennas

figures 6 and 7 respectively. In both the cases SER
decreases with increase in number of antennas.
Figure 8 shows the performance of DSTBC
diversity over MIMO MC-CDMA system with
selective combining technique for various antennas.
The figure clearly portraits the increase in
performance of the system as SER reduces with
increase in number of antennas. Use of equal gain
combining technique for DSTBC also produces the
same result of reduction in SER with increase in
number of antennas and was clearly indicated in
Figure 9. On consideration of different combining
techniques with DSTBC, it can be viewed that
maximal ratio combining technique gives better
performance and is best opted than other combining
techniques and was shown in Figure10 in the
occasion of four antennas. Figure11 shows the
performance of the system using STBC and
DSTBC site diversity scheme with selective
combining technique for 4 antennas. The figure
clearly depicts that DSTBC based site diversity
scheme gives better performance than STBC based
site diversity scheme. Figure12 and 13 delivers the
performance of the system using STBC and
DSTBC site diversity scheme under 4 antennas
with equal gain combining technique and maximal
ratio combining technique respectively. They too
indicate that the DSTBC based site diversity
scheme gives better performance than STBC based
site diversity. From these it can be concluded that
DSTBC outperforms STBC site diversity and
maximal ratio combining technique is the best
opted combining technique.

5. CONCLUSION

In this paper, site diversity scheme for MC-
CDMA system is proposed using STBC and
DSTBC with MIMO technique to improve the
performance of mobile terminals in the downlink.
This method reduces interference of the multi-cell
by jointly assigning the scrambling code according
to STBC encoding pattern along with multiple
antennas. With this method, the performance of the
mobile terminal can be improved. Simulated results
shows that DSTBC based site diversity outperform
STBC based site diversity in terms of SER. Further
from the analysis, it was identified that maximal
ratio combining technique provides reduced error
rate and is the best opted combining technique.

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