Antenna selection for space-time block codes over correlated Rayleigh fading channels

This paper studies the performance of combined convolutional coding and orthogonal space-time block coding with receive antenna selection over correlated Rayleigh fading channels. In particular, upper bounds on the bit error rate are derived for the above concatenation scheme with antenna selection. In the analysis. transmit correlation, receive correlation, and joint transmit-receive correlation are considered. It is also assumed that the receiver uses only L out of the available AT receive antennas, where, typically, L less than or equal to M. The selected antennas are those that maximize the instantaneous received signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). The analytical bounds show that the diversity order, with antenna selection, is the same as that of the full-complexity system, whereas the deterioration in SNR is upper-bounded by 10 log(10) (M/L) dB. The loss in coding gain due to the presence of spatial correlation is also quantified. This result holds for any N, AT and L, where N denotes the number of transmit antennas. Several numerical examples that validate the analysis are also presented.