The Effects of Mutual Coupling for the Space-Time Block Coded MIMO-OFDM Systems

This paper considers a new configuration of the multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) antenna system with the orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) technique. It includes the problem of correlation between the transmitting antennas as well as the receiving antennas. Physically, we should also consider the influence of mutual coupling when the separation of antenna elements becomes limited. Here, we deal with the up-link transmission of the space-time block coded (STBC) MIMO-OFDM system, without implemented the cyclic prefix (CP). The penalty of without using CP is that the receiver design of the ST-BC MIMO-OFDM system becomes more sophisticated when it is applied to combat the IBI and maintain the desired system performance, simultaneously. Based on this framework mentioned above, we investigate the mutual coupling effect over slowly-varying multipath channels. Via computer simulation results, we verify the effects of mutual coupling in performance, regarding bit-error-rate.