Delay-Limited Throughput of Space-Time Codes with Channel Estimation Errors

Lower bounds are computed on the throughput of packet-switched space-time coded systems with delay constraints. The delay constraints are accounted for by defining a delay-limited throughput as the instantaneous throughput of each packet that can be maintained with a certain probability. The analysis assumes quasi-static and independent fading across packets, packet retransmissions until success, and negligible overhead for acknowledgment packets and guard times. Upper bounds on the outage probabilities of orthogonal space-time block codes (OSTBC) and spatial multiplexing with horizontal encoding (SM-HE) are computed in the presence of channel estimation errors to obtain lower bounds on the delay-limited throughput. The target physical-layer data rate is selected at each signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) to maximize the lower bounds on the throughput. The results indicate that higher throughput is achieved using OSTBC at low SNR and SM-HE at high SNR. Furthermore, the loss of throughput due to channel estimation errors is quantified.