36 IEEE COMMUNICATIONS LETTERS, VOL. 14, NO.

1, JANUARY 2010

Design of Spreading Permutations for MIMO-CDMA Based on

Space-Time Block Codes
Min Shi, Claude DAmours, Member, IEEE, and Abbas Yongacoglu, Senior Member, IEEE
AbstractIn this paper we propose a new method for designing Filter matched r11
to c1(t)
the spreading permutations based on space time block code Bank of
r12
matrices for MIMO-CDMA systems. The new designs improve matched filters Filter matched
the bit error rate (BER) compared to MIMO-CDMA systems to c2(t)

that use spreading permutations based on T-designs. This BER

improvement comes without any increase in system complexity. r1N
Filter matched
b1 BPSK to cN(t)
Index TermsCDMA, MIMO, error correction coding. serial Modulator

w1(t) r21
b2 BPSK
to Bank of r22
Modulator matched

I. I NTRODUCTION Data in parallel
bNt
w2(t) filters
r2N
BPSK

T
converter rNr1
HE parity bit selected spreading code technique, based Modulator
Bank of rNr2

on systematic linear block codes, was first proposed wNt(t) matched

filters
in [1]. In code division multiple access (CDMA) systems rNrN
Spreading
employing this technique, the calculated parity bits are used to Sequence

selector
select a spreading sequence from a set of mutually orthogonal
spreading sequences. This technique was extended to CDMA
systems using multiple input multiple output (MIMO) tech- Fig. 1. Block diagram of MIMO-CDMA system employing permutation
niques in [2]. In a MIMO-CDMA system with transmit spreading.
antennas, instead of selecting one spreading sequence, the
parity bits select different spreading sequences from a 1. The input bit stream is converted into parallel data
set of mutually orthogonal spreading sequences; and each streams. On one signaling interval, the bits to be transmitted
transmit antenna uses one of the selected spreading sequences. are used to select spreading sequences from a set of
A different permutation of spreading sequences is assigned mutually orthogonal spreading sequences, where > .
to different sequences of parity bits, hence the technique is The message bits are then modulated using binary phase shift
referred to as permutation spreading. keying (BPSK) and each bit is spread using the spreading se-
In [2], T-designs are used to design the different spreading quence selected in the previous step. The spreading sequences
permutations. In this paper, we design the spreading code employed on a given signaling interval {1 (), ..., ()}
permutations based on Space-Time Block Codes (STBC). are chosen from a set of orthogonal spreading sequences
Compared to the results presented in [2], the STBC-based {1 (), 2 (), , ()}.
design can improve the bit error rate (BER) performance At the receiver, the output of each antenna is connected to
over the flat fading channel without increasing the system a bank of matched filters. There is one matched filter for each
complexity. of the spreading codes in the users set {1 (), 2 (), , ()}.
We compare the performance of the two techniques for We can estimate the transmitted data sequence based on the
MIMO-CDMA systems operating on frequency-flat slowly received vector, which is given by:
Rayleigh fading channels. In section II, we provide a block
r = [11 , 12 , ..., 1 , 21 , .., 1 , ..., ] (1)
diagram of the MIMO-CDMA system employing permutation
spreading. In section III, we provide the STBC-based spread-
ing code permutation design for a system employing 4 transmit III. S PACE -T IME B LOCK C ODE BASED P ERMUTATION
antennas. In section IV, we provide a union bound for the BER. The design of the spreading code permutations is based on a
The simulated BER performance for the MIMO-CDMA case STBC matrix. The 4 transmit antenna MIMO-CDMA system
considered in this paper is shown in section V. Conclusions in [2] that employs permutation spreading requires 8 spreading
are provided in section VI. sequences per user. An 8 8 space-time block code matrix,
given in [3], can be used for designing the permutation table.
II. MIMO-CDMA S YSTEM E MPLOYING P ERMUTATION This matrix is:

S PREADING 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
2 1 4 3 6 5 8 7
The block diagram of a MIMO-CDMA transmitter receiver
3 4 1 2 7 8 5 6
pair employing permutation spreading is shown in Figure
4 3 2 1 8 7 6 5
(2)
Manuscript received September 4, 2009. The associate editor coordinating 5 6 7 8 1 2 3 4

the review of this letter and approving it for publication was H. Liu. 6 5 8 7 2 1 4 3
The authors are with the School of Information Technology and Engineer-
ing, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada (e-mail: damours@site.uottawa.ca).
7 8 5 6 3 4 1 2
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LCOMM.2010.01.091797 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
1089-7798/10$25.00
c 2010 IEEE

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 SHI et al.: DESIGN OF SPREADING PERMUTATIONS FOR MIMO-CDMA BASED ON SPACE-TIME BLOCK CODES 37

TABLE I
STBC-BASED C ODE P ERMUTATIONS FOR = 4. distance between the different u s and the u corresponding
to b = [1, 1, 1, 1].
Coset Message 1 () 2 () 3 () 4 ()
Let us start by considering the distance between the received
Vector vectors associated with messages [1,1,1,1] and [0,0,0,0]. This
scenario corresponds to messages in the same coset. We will
1 0000 1 () 5 () 8 () 6 () refer to this distance as . It is given by:
1111


2 0001 2 () 6 () 7 () 5 () 4
1110 2 = 2 (5)
=1
0010 =1
3 3 () 7 () 6 () 8 ()
1101
We can show that 2 has a chi-square distribution with
4 0011 4 () 8 () 5 () 7 () 2 degrees of freedom. Therefore the probability that we
1100
transmit 0000 but detect 1111 is given by [4]:
5 0100 5 () 1 () 4 () 2 ()
1011 ( 1 (
) )( )
1 1 + 1+
0101 =
6 6 () 2 () 3 () 1 () 2 2
1010 =0
(6)
7 0110 7 () 3 () 2 () 4 ()
1001 where = 4
+4 and is the average received energy
8 0111 8 () 4 () 1 () 3 ()
per bit to single sided noise spectral density ratio.
1000 Next let us consider the probability of detecting a message
vector in a different coset that does not have any spreading
codes in common as the desired message 0000. In Table I, we
The STBC-based spreading code permutation is given in see that coset 7 does not share any spreading codes with
Table I. Columns 1, 5, 8, and 6 in (2) are respectively as- coset 1 . We refer to this distance as 0 . We can show that
signed to columns 1, 2, 3 and 4 of Table I. 20 is:
The output (normalized to the signalling interval) from the 2

2
th matched filter of the th receive antenna would be given 0 = 2 (7)
=1
as =1
{

+ if () = (), Therefore the probability of incorrectly detecting a message
= (3) from a coset that does not have any spreading codes in
, otherwise
common is given by (6) where = 2 +2 .

where is the complex channel gain for the th transmit-th Next we consider the incorrect detection of a message from
receive antenna link; is the average received energy per bit; a coset that shares 2 spreading waveforms with the desired
and is the sampled noise from the th matched filter of message. If we observe Table I, we see that six cosets share
the th receive antenna. two spreading codes with coset 1 . However it is important to
The received vector, r = u + n where u is note that the common codes of coset simply swap transmit
the received data vector that is dependent on the antennas compared to those of coset 1 . For example 1 uses
transmitted data vector, b = [1 , 2 , ..., ] and 1 () from antenna 1 and 5 () from antenna 2 while 5 uses
n = [11 , ..., 1 , 21 , ..., 2 , ..., 1 , ..., ] is a vec- 1 () from antenna 2 and 5 () from antenna 1. We refer to
tor made up of noise samples. For example, if the transmitted this as code symmetry. The distance between a message in
message m = [0, 0, 0, 0], then b = [1, 1, 1, 1] and u = 5 and the desired message is then given by
[11 , 0, 0, 0, 12, 14 , 0, 13 , 21 , 0, 0, 0, 22 , 24 , 4
0, 23 , ..., 1 , 0, 0, 0, 2 , 4 , 0, 3 ] . 2 ( )
25,1 = 2 + 1 2 2 + 1 2 2
Maximum likelihood detection (MLD) is used to detect =1
=3
which message has been transmitted by finding the minimum (8)
squared Euclidean distance between the received vector and We can show that + 2 + 2 =
all the possible received vectors in the absence of noise. The 22 + 22 , therefore the last term in (8) becomes
2
( )
expression is given as 2 2 2
=1 1 + 2 . Therefore 5,1 has the same dis-
2
b = min r u 2 (4) tribution as 0 . Since the STBC-based design maintains the
b code symmetry between all cosets that share two spreading
codes then they all have the same distance properties, therefore
IV. B IT E RROR P ROBABILITY A NALYSIS the probability of incorrectly detecting a message from a coset
that shares two spreading codes with the desired message is
Let us consider the case when the transmitted message 2
m = [0, 0, 0, 0]. Let us assume that we are transmitting a also given by (6) with = +2 . Therefore the union
narrowband MIMO-CDMA signal so that the channel can bound for the BER for a single user MIMO-CDMA system
be assumed to be frequency-nonselective. We further assume employing STBC-based permutation spreading is given by:
that the channel gains are independent. We can determine a 2
union bound on the BER by finding the squared Euclidean < + (9)
2

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 38 IEEE COMMUNICATIONS LETTERS, VOL. 14, NO. 1, JANUARY 2010

0
10 TABLE II
T- DESIGN P ERMUTATION S PREADING TABLE FOR = 4.

-1
10 Coset Message 1 () 2 () 3 () 4 ()
Vector

-2 1 0000 1 () 3 () 5 () 7 ()
10 1111
0001
BER

2 8 () 1 () 4 () 5 ()
1110
-3
10
3 0010 2 () 4 () 3 () 8 ()
Conventional Nr=1 1101
T-design Nr=1
-4 4 0011 5 () 2 () 6 () 3 ()
10 STBC design Nr=1 1100
Conventional Nr=4
T-design Nr=4 5 0100 6 () 7 () 1 () 4 ()
STBC design Nr=4 1011
-5
10 0101
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 6 3 () 6 () 8 () 1 ()
SNR(dB) 1010

7 0110 7 () 8 () 2 () 6 ()
Fig. 2. BER for STBC Permutation vs. T-Design Permutation with = 4, 1001
= 1 and = 4.
8 0111 4 () 5 () 7 () 2 ()
1000

provided that the code symmetry discussedabove is main-

tained. In (9) is given in (6) with = 4
+4 , while

the slightly increased BER. Figures 2 shows, at the BER of

is also given by (6) but with = 2 103 , the STBC permutation systems have 0.7 dB and 0.2 dB
+2 and is

gain over T-design permutation system in the case of 1 and 4

the total number of message which is 16 in our case.
receive antennas, respectively.

V. S IMULATION R ESULTS VI. C ONCLUSION

The simulation results for bit error rate (BER) performances
are presented in this section. MIMO-CDMA system with 4
transmit antennas and 1 or 4 receive antennas are considered.
The following assumptions are used in the simulation model:
1) The channel is a frequency nonselective (flat), slowly
Rayleigh fading channel, and there is no channel induced inter-
symbol interference (ISI).
2) The channel gains of different transmit and receive links
are uncorrelated.
3) It is assumed that perfect channel state information (CSI)
is available at the receiver.
Figure 2 shows the BER performances of MIMO-CDMA
system employing STBC permutation vs. the system employ-
ing T-design permutation with 4 transmit antennas and 1 or
4 receive antenna. The T-design permutation table of [2] is
given in Table II. The BER performances of MIMO-CDMA
systems employing conventional spreading are also given as
references. In the conventional system, each transmit antenna
is assigned a unique spreading sequence that is orthogonal to
the others. The spreading code assignment is fixed and does
not depend on the data being transmitted.
From Figure 2, we see that permutation spreading provides
significant gains over conventional MIMO-CDMA. Also the
MIMO-CDMA system using STBC-based code permutations
has a better BER performance compared to the system em-
ploying T-design permutations. From Table II, we see that
the T-design method does not respect the code symmetry
discussed in the previous section for cosets that have two
spreading codes in common and therefore some degrees of
freedom are lost in the squared Euclidean distance between
different messages. The lack of code symmetry accounts for
A new design method to find the permutation spreading
table for MIMO-CDMA systems is proposed in this paper.
Simulations show improvements in the BER performance
without increase the system complexity compared to the
MIMO-CDMA system employing permutation spreading in
[2].
R EFERENCES
[1] C. DAmours, Parity bit selected spreading sequences: a block coding
approach to spread spectrum, IEEE Commun. Lett., vol. 9, pp. 16-18,
Jan. 2005.
[2] C. DAmours and J.-Y. Chouinard, Parity bit selected and permutation
spreading for CDMA/MIMO systems, in Proc. IEEE Veh. Tech. Conf.,
pp. 1475-1479, Apr. 2007.
[3] V. Tarokh, H. Jafarkhani, and A. R. Calderbank, Space-time block codes
from orthogonal designs, IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory, vol. 45, pp. 1456-
1467, July 1999.
[4] J. G. Proakis, Digital Communications, 4th. ed. New York: McGraw-Hill,
2001.
[5] Y. Song, Parity bit selected spreading sequences for spread spectrum
and code division multiple access systems, M. A. Sc thesis, University
of Ottawa, 2005.

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