0112EC071102 EC-2 (BIST)

EXPERIMENT : 7
OBJECT:
Simulation of Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output (MIMO) systems, which use multiple antennas at
the transmitter and receiver ends of a wireless communication system.

INTRODUCTION:
This demo introduces Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output (MIMO) systems, which use multiple
antennas at the transmitter and receiver ends of a wireless communication system. MIMO
systems are increasingly being adopted in communication systems for the potential gains in
capacity they realize when using multiple antennas. Multiple antennas use the spatial dimension
in addition to the time and frequency ones, without changing the bandwidth requirements of the
system.
For a generic communications link, this demo focuses on transmit diversity in lieu of traditional
receive diversity. Using the flat-fading Rayleigh channel, it illustrates the concept of Orthogonal
Space-Time Block Coding, which is employable when multiple transmitter antennas are used. It
is assumed here that the channel undergoes independent fading between the multiple transmit-
receive antenna pairs.
For a chosen system, it also provides a measure of the performance degradation when the
channel is imperfectly estimated at the receiver, compared to the case of perfect channel
knowledge at the receiver.
Contents
 PART 1: Transmit Diversity vs. Receive Diversity
 PART 2: Space-Time Block Coding with Channel Estimation
 PART 3: Orthogonal Space-Time Block Coding and Further Explorations
PART 1: Transmit Diversity vs. Receive Diversity
Using diversity reception is a well-known technique to mitigate the effects of fading over a
communications link. However, it has mostly been relegated to the receiver end. In [1], Alamouti
proposes a transmit diversity scheme that offers similar diversity gains, using multiple antennas
at the transmitter. This was conceived to be more practical as, for example, it would only require
multiple antennas at the base station in comparison to multiple antennas for every mobile in a
cellular communications system.
This section highlights this comparison of transmit vs. receive diversity by simulating coherent
binary phase-shift keying (BPSK) modulation over flat-fading Rayleigh channels. For transmit
diversity, we use two transmit antennas and one receive antenna (2x1 notationally), while for
receive diversity we employ one transmit antenna and two receive antennas (1x2 notationally).
The simulation covers an end-to-end system showing the encoded and/or transmitted signal,
channel model, and reception and demodulation of the received signal. It also provides the no-
diversity link (single transmit- receive antenna case) and theoretical performance of second-order
diversity link for comparison. It is assumed here that the channel is known perfectly at the
receiver for all systems. We run the simulation over a range of Eb/No points to generate BER
results that allow us to compare the different systems.
We start by defining some common simulation parameters
frmLen = 100; % frame length
numPackets = 1000; % number of packets
EbNo = 0:2:20; % Eb/No varying to 20 dB
N = 2; % maximum number of Tx antennas
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M = 2; % maximum number of Rx antennas

and set up the simulation.
% Seed states for repeatability
seed = [98765 12345]; randn('state', seed(1)); rand('state', seed(2));

% Create BPSK mod-demod objects

P = 2; % modulation order
bpskmod = modem.pskmod('M', P, 'SymbolOrder', 'Gray');
bpskdemod = modem.pskdemod(bpskmod);

% Pre-allocate variables for speed

tx2 = zeros(frmLen, N); H = zeros(frmLen, N, M);
r21 = zeros(frmLen, 1); r12 = zeros(frmLen, 2);
z21 = zeros(frmLen, 1); z21_1 = zeros(frmLen/N, 1); z21_2 = z21_1;
z12 = zeros(frmLen, M);
error11 = zeros(1, numPackets); BER11 = zeros(1, length(EbNo));
error21 = error11; BER21 = BER11; error12 = error11; BER12 = BER11; BERthy2 = BER11;
% Set up a figure for visualizing BER results
h = gcf; grid on; hold on;
set(gca, 'yscale', 'log', 'xlim', [EbNo(1), EbNo(end)], 'ylim', [1e-5 1]);
xlabel('Eb/No (dB)'); ylabel('BER'); set(h,'NumberTitle','off');
set(h, 'renderer', 'zbuffer'); set(h,'Name','Transmit vs. Receive Diversity');
title('Transmit vs. Receive Diversity');

% Loop over several EbNo points

for idx = 1:length(EbNo)
% Loop over the number of packets
for packetIdx = 1:numPackets
data = randint(frmLen, 1, P); % data vector per user per channel
tx = modulate(bpskmod, data); % BPSK modulation

% Alamouti Space-Time Block Encoder, G2, full rate

% G2 = [s1 s2; -s2* s1*]
s1 = tx(1:N:end); s2 = tx(2:N:end);
tx2(1:N:end, :) = [s1 s2];
tx2(2:N:end, :) = [-conj(s2) conj(s1)];

% Create the Rayleigh distributed channel response matrix

% for two transmit and two receive antennas
H(1:N:end, :, :) = (randn(frmLen/2, N, M) + ...
j*randn(frmLen/2, N, M))/sqrt(2);
% assume held constant for 2 symbol periods
H(2:N:end, :, :) = H(1:N:end, :, :);

% Received signals
% for uncoded 1x1 system
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r11 = awgn(H(:, 1, 1).*tx, EbNo(idx));

% for G2-coded 2x1 system - with normalized Tx power, i.e., the

% total transmitted power is assumed constant
r21 = awgn(sum(H(:, :, 1).*tx2, 2)/sqrt(N), EbNo(idx));

% for Maximal-ratio combined 1x2 system

for i = 1:M
r12(:, i) = awgn(H(:, 1, i).*tx, EbNo(idx));
end

% Front-end Combiners - assume channel response known at Rx

% for G2-coded 2x1 system
hidx = 1:N:length(H);
z21_1 = r21(1:N:end).* conj(H(hidx, 1, 1)) + ...
conj(r21(2:N:end)).* H(hidx, 2, 1);

z21_2 = r21(1:N:end).* conj(H(hidx, 2, 1)) - ...

conj(r21(2:N:end)).* H(hidx, 1, 1);
z21(1:N:end) = z21_1; z21(2:N:end) = z21_2;

% for Maximal-ratio combined 1x2 system

for i = 1:M
z12(:, i) = r12(:, i).* conj(H(:, 1, i));
end

% ML Detector (minimum Euclidean distance)

demod11 = demodulate(bpskdemod, r11.*conj(H(:, 1, 1)));
demod21 = demodulate(bpskdemod, z21);
demod12 = demodulate(bpskdemod, sum(z12, 2));

% Determine errors
error11(packetIdx) = biterr(demod11, data);
error21(packetIdx) = biterr(demod21, data);
error12(packetIdx) = biterr(demod12, data);
end % end of FOR loop for numPackets

% Calculate BER for current idx

% for uncoded 1x1 system
BER11(idx) = sum(error11)/(numPackets*frmLen);

% for G2 coded 2x1 system

BER21(idx) = sum(error21)/(numPackets*frmLen);

% for Maximal-ratio combined 1x2 system

BER12(idx) = sum(error12)/(numPackets*frmLen);
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0112EC071102 EC-2 (BIST)

% for theoretical performance of second-order diversity

BERthy2(idx) = berfading(EbNo(idx), 'psk', 2, 2);

% Plot results
semilogy(EbNo(1:idx), BER11(1:idx), 'r*', ...
EbNo(1:idx), BER21(1:idx), 'go', ...
EbNo(1:idx), BER12(1:idx), 'bs', ...
EbNo(1:idx), BERthy2(1:idx), 'm');
legend('No Diversity (1Tx, 1Rx)', 'Alamouti (2Tx, 1Rx)',...
'Maximal-Ratio Combining (1Tx, 2Rx)', ...
'Theoretical 2nd-Order Diversity');

drawnow;
end % end of for loop for EbNo

% Perform curve fitting and replot the results

fitBER11 = berfit(EbNo, BER11);
fitBER21 = berfit(EbNo, BER21);
fitBER12 = berfit(EbNo, BER12);
semilogy(EbNo, fitBER11, 'r', EbNo, fitBER21, 'g', EbNo, fitBER12, 'b');
hold off;
The transmit diversity system has a computation complexity very similar to that of the receive
diversity system.
The resulting simulation results show that using two transmit antennas and one receive antenna
provides the same diversity order as the maximal-ratio combined (MRC) system of one transmit
antenna and two receive antennas.
Also observe that transmit diversity has a 3 dB disadvantage when compared to MRC receive
diversity. This is because we modelled the total transmitted power to be the same in both cases.
If we calibrate the transmitted power such that the received power for these two cases is the
same, then the performance would be identical. The theoretical performance of second-order
diversity link matches the transmit diversity system as it normalizes the total power across all the
diversity branches.
The accompanying functional scripts, MRC1M.m and OSTBC2M.m aid further exploration for
the interested users.

PART 2: Space-Time Block Coding with Channel Estimation

Building on the theory of orthogonal designs, Tarokh et al. [2] generalized Alamouti's transmit
diversity scheme to an arbitrary number of transmitter antennas, leading to the concept of Space-
Time Block Codes. For complex signal constellations, they showed that Alamouti's scheme is the
only full-rate scheme for two transmit antennas.
In this section, we study the performance of such a scheme with two receive antennas (i.e., a 2x2
system) with and without channel estimation. In the realistic scenario where the channel state
information is not known at the receiver, this has to be extracted from the received signal. We
assume that the channel estimator performs this using orthogonal pilot signals that are prepended

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0112EC071102 EC-2 (BIST)

to every packet [3]. It is assumed that the channel remains unchanged for the length of the packet
(i.e., it undergoes slow fading).
A simulation similar to the one described in the previous section is employed here, which leads
us to estimate the BER performance for a space-time block coded system using two transmit and
two receive antennas.
Again we start by defining the common simulation parameters
frmLen = 100; % frame length
maxNumErrs = 300; % maximum number of errors
maxNumPackets = 3000; % maximum number of packets
EbNo = 0:2:12; % Eb/No varying to 12 dB
N = 2; % number of Tx antennas
M = 2; % number of Rx antennas
pLen = 8; % number of pilot symbols per frame
W = hadamard(pLen);
pilots = W(:, 1:N); % orthogonal set per transmit antenna
and set up the simulation.
% Seed states for repeatability
seed = [98765 12345]; randn('state', seed(1)); rand('state', seed(2));

% Pre-allocate variables for speed

tx2 = zeros(frmLen, N); r = zeros(pLen + frmLen, M);
H = zeros(pLen + frmLen, N, M); H_e = zeros(frmLen, N, M);
z_e = zeros(frmLen, M); z1_e = zeros(frmLen/N, M); z2_e = z1_e;
z = z_e; z1 = z1_e; z2 = z2_e;
BER22_e = zeros(1, length(EbNo)); BER22 = BER22_e;
% Set up a figure for visualizing BER results
clf(h); grid on; hold on;
set(gca,'yscale','log','xlim',[EbNo(1), EbNo(end)],'ylim',[1e-5 1]);
xlabel('Eb/No (dB)'); ylabel('BER'); set(h,'NumberTitle','off');
set(h,'Name','Orthogonal Space-Time Block Coding');
set(h, 'renderer', 'zbuffer'); title('G2-coded 2x2 System');

% Loop over several EbNo points

for idx = 1:length(EbNo)
numPackets = 0; totNumErr22 = 0; totNumErr22_e = 0;

% Loop till the number of errors exceed 'maxNumErrs'

% or the maximum number of packets have been simulated
while (totNumErr22 < maxNumErrs) && (totNumErr22_e < maxNumErrs) && ...
(numPackets < maxNumPackets)
data = randint(frmLen, 1, P); % data vector per user per channel
tx = modulate(bpskmod, data); % BPSK modulation

% Alamouti Space-Time Block Encoder, G2, full rate

% G2 = [s1 s2; -s2* s1*]
s1 = tx(1:N:end); s2 = tx(2:N:end);
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tx2(1:N:end, :) = [s1 s2];

tx2(2:N:end, :) = [-conj(s2) conj(s1)];

% Prepend pilot symbols for each frame

transmit = [pilots; tx2];

% Create the Rayleigh distributed channel response matrix

H(1, :, :) = (randn(N, M) + j*randn(N, M))/sqrt(2);
% assume held constant for the whole frame and pilot symbols
H = H(ones(pLen + frmLen, 1), :, :);

% Received signal for each Rx antenna

% with pilot symbols transmitted
for i = 1:M
% with normalized Tx power
r(:, i) = awgn(sum(H(:, :, i).*transmit, 2)/sqrt(N), EbNo(idx));
end

% Channel Estimation
% For each link => N*M estimates
for n = 1:N
H_e(1, n, :) = (r(1:pLen, :).' * pilots(:, n))./pLen;
end
% assume held constant for the whole frame
H_e = H_e(ones(frmLen, 1), :, :);

% Combiner using estimated channel

heidx = 1:N:length(H_e);
for i = 1:M
z1_e(:, i) = r(pLen+1:N:end, i).* conj(H_e(heidx, 1, i)) + ...
conj(r(pLen+2:N:end, i)).* H_e(heidx, 2, i);

z2_e(:, i) = r(pLen+1:N:end, i).* conj(H_e(heidx, 2, i)) - ...

conj(r(pLen+2:N:end, i)).* H_e(heidx, 1, i);
end
z_e(1:N:end, :) = z1_e; z_e(2:N:end, :) = z2_e;

% Combiner using known channel

hidx = pLen+1:N:length(H);
for i = 1:M
z1(:, i) = r(pLen+1:N:end, i).* conj(H(hidx, 1, i)) + ...
conj(r(pLen+2:N:end, i)).* H(hidx, 2, i);

z2(:, i) = r(pLen+1:N:end, i).* conj(H(hidx, 2, i)) - ...

conj(r(pLen+2:N:end, i)).* H(hidx, 1, i);
end
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z(1:N:end, :) = z1; z(2:N:end, :) = z2;

% ML Detector (minimum Euclidean distance)

demod22_e = demodulate(bpskdemod, sum(z_e, 2)); % estimated
demod22 = demodulate(bpskdemod, sum(z, 2)); % known

% Determine errors
numPackets = numPackets + 1;
totNumErr22_e = totNumErr22_e + biterr(demod22_e, data);
totNumErr22 = totNumErr22 + biterr(demod22, data);
end % end of FOR loop for numPackets

% Calculate BER for current idx

% for estimated channel
BER22_e(idx) = totNumErr22_e/(numPackets*frmLen);

% for known channel

BER22(idx) = totNumErr22/(numPackets*frmLen);

% Plot results
semilogy(EbNo(1:idx), BER22_e(1:idx), 'ro');
semilogy(EbNo(1:idx), BER22(1:idx), 'g*');
legend(['Channel estimated with ' num2str(pLen) ' pilot symbols/frame'],...
'Known channel');
drawnow;
end % end of for loop for EbNo

% Perform curve fitting and replot the results

fitBER22_e = berfit(EbNo, BER22_e);
fitBER22 = berfit(EbNo, BER22);
semilogy(EbNo, fitBER22_e, 'r', EbNo, fitBER22, 'g'); hold off;
For the 2x2 simulated system, the diversity order is different than that seen for either 1x2 or 2x1
systems in the previous section.
Note that with 8 pilot symbols for each 100 symbols of data, channel estimation causes about a 1
dB degradation in performance for the selected Eb/No range. This improves with an increase in
the number of pilot symbols per frame but adds to the overhead of the link. In this comparison,
we keep the transmitted SNR per symbol to be the same in both cases.
The accompanying functional script, OSTBC2M_E.m aids further experimentation for the
interested users.

PART 3: Orthogonal Space-Time Block Coding and Further Explorations

In this final section, we present some performance results for orthogonal space-time block
coding using four transmit antennas (4x1 system) using a half-rate code, G4, as per [4].
We expect the system to offer a diversity order of 4 and will compare it with 1x4 and 2x2
systems, which have the same diversity order also. To allow for a fair comparison, we use
quaternary PSK with the half-rate G4 code to achieve the same transmission rate of 1 bit/sec/Hz.
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0112EC071102 EC-2 (BIST)

Since these results take some time to generate, we load the results from a prior simulation. The
functional script OSTBC4M.m is included, which, along with MRC1M.m and OSTBC2M.m,
was used to generate these results. The user is urged to use these scripts as a starting point to
study other codes and systems.
load ostbcRes.mat;

% Set up a figure for visualizing BER results

clf(h); grid on; hold on; set(h, 'renderer', 'zbuffer');
set(gca, 'yscale', 'log', 'xlim', [EbNo(1), EbNo(end)], 'ylim', [1e-5 1]);
xlabel('Eb/No (dB)'); ylabel('BER'); set(h,'NumberTitle','off');
set(h,'Name','Orthogonal Space-Time Block Coding(2)');
title('G4-coded 4x1 System and Other Comparisons');

% Theoretical performance of fourth-order diversity for QPSK

BERthy4 = berfading(EbNo, 'psk', 4, 4);

% Plot results
semilogy(EbNo, ber11, 'r*', EbNo, ber41, 'ms', EbNo, ber22, 'c^', ...
EbNo, ber14, 'ko', EbNo, BERthy4, 'g');
legend('No Diversity (1Tx, 1Rx), BPSK', 'OSTBC (4Tx, 1Rx), QPSK', ...
'Alamouti (2Tx, 2Rx), BPSK', 'Maximal-Ratio Combining (1Tx, 4Rx), BPSK', ...
'Theoretical 4th-Order Diversity, QPSK');

% Perform curve fitting

fitBER11 = berfit(EbNo, ber11);
fitBER41 = berfit(EbNo(1:9), ber41(1:9));
fitBER22 = berfit(EbNo(1:8), ber22(1:8));
fitBER14 = berfit(EbNo(1:7), ber14(1:7));
semilogy(EbNo, fitBER11, 'r', EbNo(1:9), fitBER41, 'm', ...
EbNo(1:8), fitBER22, 'c', EbNo(1:7), fitBER14, 'k'); hold off;

RESULT
Simulation of Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output (MIMO) systems, which use multiple antennas at
the transmitter and receiver ends of a wireless communication system. Has been done

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