Combined STBC and VBLAST scheme with transmit antenna selection for downlink space distributed MIMO systems

A novel combined space-time block code (STBC) and vertical bell-labs layered space time (VBLAST) scheme is developed in this paper for the downlinks space distributed multiple-input multiple-output (SD-MIMO) system on spatial correlated channels. Considering the topological structure of SD-MIMO system and the characteristic of the spatial correlated SD-MIMO channels, STBC is utilized within each distributed antenna (DA) port while VBLAST is adopted between largely spaced DA ports. In order to decrease the computational complexity and save the total transmit power, a transmit antenna selection scheme by the strategy of minimum propagation path loss is investigated as well. The simulation results prove that the proposed STBC-VBLAST scheme can improve the BER performance obviously compared with conventional VBLAST scheme and keep the BER performance robust over spatial corrected SD-MIMO channels. Based on the results of this paper, the proposed STBC-VBLAST scheme appears to be an effective solution to achieve a good trade off between diversity and multiplexing for downlink SD-MIMO systems.