International Journal of Electronics and Computer Science Engineering 84

Available Online at www.ijecse.org

Design Error Performance of Space-Frequency

Block Coded OFDM Systems with Different
Equalizers and For Different Modulation
Schemes
1
Rijhun Tripathi, 2 Ruchi Giri,3 Amit Kumar
1
Assistant Professor, 2 3 Lecturer
123
Department of Electronics & Communication
12
Vishveshwarya Group Of Institutes, G.B. Nagar, Uttar Pradesh,India
rijhun25@gmail.com,Ruchigiri14@gmail.com
3
Colleges of Engineering and Rural Technology, Meerut, Uttar Pradesh
rasdee@gmail.com

Abstract—Multiple transmit and receive antennas can be used to form multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channels
to increase the capacity (by a factor of the minimum number of transmit and receive antennas) and data rate. In this
paper, the combination of MIMO technology and orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems is
considered for wideband transmission to mitigate inter symbol interference and to enhance system capacity. It owns the
advantages of both MIMO and OFDM. MIMO-OFDM system exploits the space and frequency diversity simultaneously
to improve the performance of system. The coding is done across OFDM subcarriers rather than OFDM symbols. In this
paper, the performance of Space-Frequency (SF) block coding for MIMO-OFDM along with different equalizers is
investigated. Bit Error Rate (BER) analysis is presented using different equalizers and then optimum equalization method
is suggested.

Keywords: MIMO-OFDM, Space-frequency Block coding, ZF Equalizer, Decision Feedback Equalizer, ML Equalizer.

I. INTRODUCTION

It is well known that multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems increase the capacity and the diversity of
wireless communication systems. Most of the current researches focus on designing MIMO codes to extract the
multiplexing gain (increase spectral efficiency) [1] or the diversity gain (increase the link reliability) using
orthogonal or quasi-orthogonal designs [2] [3] in wireless flat fading channels. However in both cases, the bit-error-
rate (BER) performance and the spectral efficiency depend also on the outer codes associated to the MIMO
schemes. For frequency selective channels, MIMO schemes can be combined with orthogonal frequency division
multiplexing (OFDM) as space-time block coded (STBC)-OFDM or space-frequency block coded (SFBC)-OFDM
[4] [5].

OFDM [6] is based on the principle of frequency division multiplexing (FDM), but is utilized as a digital
modulation scheme via DFT. In OFDM, the entire channel is divided into N parallel narrow sub-channels depending
upon IFFT size. Thus symbol duration becomes N times longer than in a single carrier system with the same symbol
rate. The symbol duration is made even longer by adding a cyclic prefix to each symbol. As long as the cyclic prefix
is longer than the channel delay spread, OFDM offers inter symbol interference (ISI) free transmission. Another key
advantage of using OFDM is that it reduces the equalization complexity to great extent by enabling equalization in

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Design Error Performance of Space-Frequency Block Coded OFDM Systems with
Different Equalizers and For Different Modulation Schemes

frequency domain. In this paper, we combine multiple transmit and receive antennas for OFDM to form MIMO-
OFDM. The air-link architecture of MIMO-OFDM [7] has also been suggested for the future 4G wireless systems.
MIMO-OFDM has potential to meet high data rate requirements and high performance over various challenging
channels that may be time-selective and frequency selective. Further, MIMO channels can boost the capacity and the
diversity of the system.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In section 2, we introduce ST/SF Coded MIMO-OFDM transceiver
model and briefly review the SF code design criteria for 2×1 and 2×2 systems. In section 3, various equalizer
algorithms are presented along with their implementation issues in frequency domain. The simulation results are
presented in section 4, and some conclusions are drawn in section 5.

II. ST/SF CODED MIMO-OFDM SYSTEM MODEL

ST coding combines coding with transmit diversity to achieve high diversity performance. ST coding can be
implemented in two forms i.e. ST Trellis and block coding. In first scheme, information stream is encoded via M
convolution encoders to obtain M streams of symbols but its decoding complexity increases exponentially as a
function of diversity and transmission rate [8]. To address this problem Alamouti proposed Orthogonal ST block
codes (OSTBC) for 2×1 and 2×2 systems. In this scheme at a particular time instant two symbols are simultaneously
transmitted from the two antennas. The symbol transmitted from antenna one and two is S0 and S1.During the next
time period symbol –S1* is transmitted from antenna 1 and S0* from antenna 2. Where * is the complex conjugate
operation. This scheme is illustrated in Table 1.

Table 1 SPACE-TIME SCHEME FOR 2 X 1SYSTEM

Time TX 1 TX 2
T S0 S1

t+T -S1* S0*

Diversity order can be increased for more reliable communication by employing two receiver antennas on receiver
side as in Table 2.
Table 2 RECEIVED SIGNALS AT TWO RECIEVERS
Time RX 1 RX 2
t Y11 Y21

t+T Y12 Y22

For some applications, where reliability is of more concern we can increase the diversity order [3] to 2N. N is the
number of receiving antennas but the number of transmitting antenna will remain 2. Unfortunately, OSTBC also lacks
in providing any coding gain and to achieve a rate larger than 3/4 [10] for more than two transmit antennas. In SF
scheme, coding is done across antennas and OFDM sub-channels. SF coding [11. 12] can be realized by applying the
Alamouti code over two adjacent sub-channels in one OFDM block as in Table 3.

Table 3 SPACE-FREQUENCY SCHEME FOR 2 TX SYSTEMS

Antenna OFDM Sub-channel
TX 1 S0 -S1*

TX 2 S1 S0*

Table 3 shows that two symbols S0 and –S1* are sent from sub-channels K and L of the same OFDM block
through transmitting antenna 1. Similarly symbols S1 and S0* are sent from sub-channels K and L of the same OFDM

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block but through transmitting antenna 2. However, this simple SF coding approach can only achieve space diversity
gain, whereas the maximum diversity gain in MIMO-OFDM system will equal to NMD [6]. Where D is number of
coherence bandwidths. Research is going on in improving above parameter.
The general transceiver structure of MIMO-OFDM is presented in Figure 1. MIMO channel in the presented
model consists of 2 transmit and receive antennas. First the incoming data stream is mapped into data symbols via
some modulation technique like BPSK, 16-QAM (in this paper).A serial to parallel converter (SPC) coverts the
incoming symbols into number of parallel sub-streams. Number of parallel streams depends upon the number of
transmitting antennas (2 in this paper).

Tx
IDFT & 1 h1(n)
X1(n) Cyclic
Serial to Prefix Rx
Space-Freq Tx
X (m) Parallel Encoder
IDFT & 2 h2(n)
X2(n) Cyclic
Prefix

Pa rallel to Prefix
X% ( m ) Seria l
Space-Freq
Decode r
Y(n) Remova l &
DFT

Channel
Estimator
 xe   xo 
X1 ( n ) = X 2 (n) =
 − x*   x* 
 o  e
Figure 1: Block diagram of space-frequency coded MIMO-OFDM transmitter diversity system.

Therefore, a signal vector S = {s[0], s[1], ··· , s[Nt − 1]} is provided as the input to of SFBC encoder where Nt is
equal to the number of transmitting antenna. Let us define sub-blocks s1[k] and s2[k] as s1[k]=(s[2k] -s∗[2k +1]) and
s2[k]=(s[2k +1] s∗[2k]) respectively (Figure 1). Then, the orthogonal block code for two transmit antennas can be
written as SFBC provides two blocks S1 and S2, each of the length N, for OFDM at the transmitter. In order to utilize
the space-frequency diversity, the input blocks are encoded as shown in table 3. After applying the SFBC-OFDM
with cyclic prefix, which maps each symbol at a particular subcarrier, the OFDM symbols are transmitted from each
antenna through the time varying multipath fading channel. The received signal from two receiving antennas after
OFDM demodulation are sent to linear combiner, which combine the input signals to form composite output signal,
H j ,i = diag ( H j ,i [ k ])
N −1
The combining scheme for system in figure1 is suggested by Alamouti [2]. Let is an
k =0
N×N diagonal matrix with elements corresponding to the DFT of the channel response between the i-th transmit and
j-th receive antennas. Under the assumption that the CSI is known at the receiver, the different detection scheme and
equalizer can be used for decoding the received signal. This detection scheme can be written as:
Nr
S%[ k ] = ∑ ( h j ,1 [ 2 n] r j [2 n ] + h j ,2 [ 2 n] r j [ 2 n + 1]
* *
(1)
j =1
Nr
S%[2 k + 1] = ∑ ( h j ,2 [ 2 n + 1] r j [ 2 n] − h j ,1 [2 n + 1] r j [2 n + 1]
* *
(2)
j =1
The combined signal is then equalized by applying different equalizers like Zero-forcing (ZF), Decision feedback
equalization (DFE) and Maximum likelihood (ML) detector which are discussed in section 3.

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Design Error Performance of Space-Frequency Block Coded OFDM Systems with
Different Equalizers and For Different Modulation Schemes

A. Equalization

The inter-symbol interference (ISI) caused by multipath MIMO channels distorts the MIMO-OFDM transmitted
signal which causes bit errors at receiver. To minimize this ISI equalization [13] is needed. Equalizer minimizes the
error between actual output and desired output by continuous updating its filter coefficients. Equalization can be done
in both time and frequency domain. Equalization in frequency domain is simpler to use as compared to time domain.
In this paper various equalizers like ZFE, DFE and ML detection are implemented in frequency domain and their
performance evaluation is done in terms of bit error rates (BER).

1) Zero-Forcing (ZF) Equalization

In ZF equalizer [14] the coefficients are chosen to force the samples of the combined channel and equalizer
impulse response to zero. The combined response of the channel with the equalizer is given by (3)

H channel ( f ) * H equalizer ( f ) = 1 (3)

Where Hchannel (f) is folded frequency response of the MIMO-channel and Hequalizer (f) is frequency response of
equalizer. Equations (1) and (2) show the combined MIMO-OFDM symbols at receiver 1 and 2. ZF equalizer can be
realized by multiplying the (1) and (2) by vector 1/H(k).Where H (k) is the normalized MIMO-channel vector which
can be formed as shown in (4).
* *
H = H11.* H12 + H 21.* H 22 (4)
In this case, the equalizer filter compensates for the channel-induced ISI as well as the ISI brought about by the
transmitter and receiver filters. Zero-Forcing filter designed using the equation above does not eliminate all ISI
because the filter is of finite length.

2) Decision Feedback Equalizer (DFE)

In DFE [15] once an input symbol has been detected, the ISI that it induces on future symbols is estimated and
subtracted out before detection of subsequent symbols. DFE is realized in direct transversal form which consists of
feed forward filter (FFF) and a feedback filter (FBF) as shown in Fig. 2. The FBF [15] is driven by decision on the
output of the detector, and its coefficients are adjusted to cancel out the ISI on the current symbol from past detected
symbols.

Input
Transversal Filter

Adaptive Weight Algorithm ∑

- Desired
Response

Figure 2: Schematic of Decision Feedback Equalizer

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RLS (recursive least squares) algorithm is used for determining the coefficient of an adaptive filter [16]. RLS
algorithm uses information from all past input samples to estimate the autocorrelation matrix of the input vector. To
decrease the influence of input samples, a weighting factor for the influence of each sample is used. First process is
the filtering in which RLS computes the output of a linear filter in response to an input signal and generates an
estimation error. Second is the adjustment of parameters of the filter in accordance with the estimation error.
Reconsider equation 3 and multiply it with weight vector w yields (5).

r ( n) = w H ( n) C ( n) (5)
Equation (5) describes the filtering portion of the algorithm. Transversal filter is excited to compute error
estimates given by (6). All subscripts are omitted for simplification

e ( n) = d ( n) – r ( n) (6)
Where nr is the desired response and is given by (7).Equation (8) describes the adaptive operation in which the
tap-weight vector is updated by incrementing its old value by an amount equal to the complex conjugate of the
estimation error.

d ( n) = w r ( n) (7)

w ( nr + 1) = w ( nr ) + µ C (n) e* (n) (8)

Where nr is number of iterations and µ is step size, which controls the convergence and stability of algorithm.

3) Maximum Likelihood (ML) Detection

In more practical situations we choose ML [16, 17] based equalizer which tests all possible data sequences and
chooses the data sequence with the maximum probability as the output. It requires knowledge of channel
characteristics in order to compute the metrics for making decisions. It also requires knowledge of statistical
distribution of the noise, which determines the form of metric for optimum demodulation of the received signal.
Assuming that perfect channel state information is available, the receiver chooses S = (s1, s2,…., sN) from the
transmission constellation C that minimizes the following decision metric (9):
Nr L
 Nt

r − Hs = ∑∑ d 2  rt ,m , ∑ hn ,m s n,t 
2
(9)
m =1 t =1  n =1 
The minimization of (1, 2) results in a ML decoding, which can alternatively be represented by
2
sˆ = arg min r − Hs (10)
s∈C
Where ||A|| denotes the Euclidean norm of matrix A defined by ( )
A = tr AH A , tr ( A) and AH ,
2

2
respectively, denotes the trace and Hermitian transpose of matrix A, and d (a,b) is the squared Euclidean distance
between signals a and b calculated by

(
d 2 ( a, b ) = a − b = ( a − b ) a* − b*
2
) (11)
Above equations holds good for all data sequences. Decoding complexity increases exponentially by increasing
number of transmitting and receiver antennas in such cases joint detection will be used like sphere decoding [9].

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Design Error Performance of Space-Frequency Block Coded OFDM Systems with
Different Equalizers and For Different Modulation Schemes

B. Quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM)

"Q-A-M" is both an analog and a digital modulation scheme. It conveys two analog message signals, or two
digital bit streams, by changing (modulating) the amplitudes of two carrier waves, using the amplitude-shift keying
(ASK) digital modulation scheme or amplitude modulation (AM) analog modulation scheme. The two carrier waves,
usually sinusoids, are out of phase with each other by 90° and are thus called quadrature carriers or quadrature
components — hence the name of the scheme. The modulated waves are summed, and the resulting waveform is a
combination of both phase-shift keying (PSK) and amplitude-shift keying (ASK), or (in the analog case) of phase
modulation (PM) and amplitude modulation. In the digital QAM case, a finite number of at least two phases and at
least two amplitudes are used. PSK modulators are often designed using the QAM principle, but are not considered as
QAM since the amplitude of the modulated carrier signal is constant. QAM is used extensively as a modulation
scheme for digital telecommunication systems. Spectral efficiencies of 6 bits/s/Hz can be achieved with QAM. QAM
modulation is being used in optical fiber systems as bit rates increase – QAM16 and QAM64 can be optically
emulated with a 3-path interferometer

1) QAM comparison with other modes

As there are advantages and disadvantages of using QAM it is necessary to compare QAM with other modes
before making a decision about the optimum mode. Some radio communications systems dynamically change the
modulation scheme dependent upon the link conditions and requirements - signal level, noise, data rate required, etc.

The table below compares various forms of modulation:

Modulation Bits per symbol Error margin Complexity

OOK 1 1/2 0.5 Low
BPSK 1 1 1 Medium
QPSK 1 1 / √2 0.71 Medium
16 QAM 4 √2 / 6 0.23 High
64QAM 6 &radic / 14 0.1 High

III. SIMULATION RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Simulation results are plotted for BER with variation in signal to noise ratio (SNR) in MIMO-OFDM system.
Simulation are carried out in two phases, in first phase results are plotted considering 2 transmit and 1 receiving
antenna and in second phase results are plotted considering 2 transmit and 2 receiving antenna. The channel
experienced by each transmitting antenna is considered to be independent of each other. It is also assumed that
transmitting power of each transmitting antenna is same. Further, we assume that the receiver has perfect knowledge
of the channel.
Figure 3 (a) and 3 (b) shows BER performance for 2×1 MIMO-OFDM system using BPSK and 2×2 MIMO-
OFDM system using 16-QAM data modulation techniques. Using BPSK BER gets reduced to 10-4 at SNR of 16dB in
first sub-plot and around 10-3 at SNR of 11 and 10 dB in subsequent sub plots. Whereas using 16-QAM BER reduced
to 10-3 at SNR of around 25 in first sub-plot and around 18 and 14 dB in other sub-plots. Thus BER performance is
comparatively better in BPSK than 16-QAM. Comparing Figure 3 (a) and (b) it can be clearly observed that

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employing 2 receivers greatly enhance the system performance. Among equalizers ML equalizers dominates other
mentioned equalizers.

Fig. 3 (a) BER performance for 2×1 MIMO-OFDM

MIMO system using BPSK

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Design Error Performance of Space-Frequency
Space Frequency Block Coded OFDM Systems with
Different Equalizers and For Different Modulation Schemes

Fig. 3 (b) BER performance for 2×2 MIMO-OFDM

MIMO system using 16 QAM

IV. CONCLUSION

In this paper, we studied 2×1 and 2×2 MIMO MIMO-OFDM

OFDM system performance under mobile radio channel using
Alamouti based SF coding.
oding. Further, the system performance is compared with different equalizers in frequency
domain. A significant performance gain is observed by employing equalizers along with Alamouti scheme. It is
already mentioned that the diversity gain as reference to Fig. 1 is 4. Mentioned system does not showing full-diversity
full
so research is going for full-diversity
diversity rate 1 codes. Rate can be further enhanced by employing algebraic SF codes.
The high-rate
rate SFBC mostly relies on joint detection and thus increases the decoding
decoding complexity. This decoding
burden can be alleviated by an approximate ML decoding, known as sphere decoding. System performance can
further be improved by extending coding in three dimension i.e. space, time and frequency such codes are called STF
codes.
des. STF codes further increase the complexity of the system.

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