Performance Analysis of OSTBC Relaying in AF MIMO Relay Systems With Imperfect CSI

In this paper, the transmission of orthogonal space-time block codes (OSTBCs) in amplify-and-forward (AF) multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) relay networks, with imperfect channel state information (CSI), is considered. Individual channel estimation and time-efficient cascaded (for estimating the product of channel matrices) channel estimation protocols are used for estimating the channel matrices required for decoding of OSTBC data at the destination. We derive tight approximations for the moment-generating function (m.g.f.) of the received signal-to-noise ratio at the destination node with imperfect CSI, by ignoring higher order noise terms, in Rayleigh fading. Using the derived m.g.f. expression, we obtain the analytical symbol error rate (SER) of the AF MIMO relay system for general OSTBCs with M-ary phase-shift keying constellation. The diversity order of the MIMO OSTBC relay system is also derived for some special cases by using the SER expression.