Performance evaluation of the V-BLAST system under correlated fading channels

The MIMO system (multiple antennas at the transmitter and receiver) is capable of very high theoretical capacities. As an important space-time code, V-BLAST (vertical-Bell Lab layered space-time) code has been researched recently. However, most research in this area has assumed that the antennas are decorrelated to each other at both ends. Unfortunately, in practice, this assumption is not satisfied. The paper introduces a model for a correlated channel matrix, and as a result the degradation of BER performance can be simulated without the constraint of the number of antennas. In addition, the stochastic property of the SNR of the received signal is demonstrated, and the analytical upper bound of the average probability of error for zero-forcing V-BLAST under correlated Rayleigh fading channels is derived. Simulation verifies the analysis.