The Effects of Co-channel Interference on Spatial Diversity Techniques

This paper investigates the effects of co-channel interference on spatial diversity techniques. By analyzing distributions of post-processing signal to noise plus interference ratio (SINR) after matched filtering, we capture the performance characteristics of spatial diversity techniques in an interference limited environment. Using intuition from the theoretical analysis of a single carrier system, the performance of spatial diversity techniques in an OFDMA system with co-channel interference is also characterized. Our analytical and simulation results show that space time block code (STBC) schemes are more sensitive to co-channel interference than other spatial diversity techniques so their performance gain in a noise-limited environment can be lost in an interference-limited environment.