Performance of multiple-input and multipleoutput orthogonal frequency and code division multiplexing systems in fading channels

In broadband downlink transmission, orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) combined with code-division multiple access (CDMA) is a prospective technique for high-data rate transmission in future wireless communication systems. By adding spatial diversity, multiple-input and multiple-output orthogonal frequency and code division multiplexing (MIMO-OFCDM) offers superior performance relative to both traditional OFDM systems and single-input and single-output OFCDM (SISO-OFCDM) systems. In this study, the authors present an analytical study and investigation of a MIMO-OFCDM downlink system that hires orthogonal variable spreading factor codes to spread each transmitted symbol in both time and frequency domains. Different gain combining schemes are employed in the frequency domain to recover the data symbols of the desired code channels, and space-time block coding is used to achieve spatial diversity. The more general Ricean fading channel is used to model the MIMO channel. The OFCDM system employs Alamouti transmit diversity scheme with multiple receive antennas. For systems without multi-code interference (MCI), analytical bit-error rate results are obtained and compared with simulation results. The authors also investigate the effect of correlation in frequency domain, where we verify that minimum mean-square error frequency combining is more robust to MCI than equal-gain combining.