Performance analysis of ST-COFDM system for IEEE 802.16a using the spatial channel model

Abstract

IEEE standard 802.16a heralds the entry of broadband wireless access as a major new tool in the effort to link homes and businesses to core telecommunications networks worldwide. As currently defined through IEEE Standard 802.16, a wireless MAN provides network access to buildings through exterior antennas communicating with central radio base stations. ST-COFDM system for WirelessMAN-OFDM, one of the three 2-11 GHz air interface specifications in 802.16a, utilizes multiple transmit-and-receive antennas with orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing. This system also applies channel coding which concatenate shortened Reed-Solomon codes and punctured convolutional codes to enable variable block sizes and variable error-correction capability. At the receiver, this system uses decoding algorithm based on Alamouti scheme in [3] and error-and-erasure decoding for Reed-Solomon code and soft-decision Viterbi decoding for convolutional code, under the assumption that the fading channel coefficient remains constant over the duration of 2 OFDM symbols, perfect channel state information, and ideal timing synchronization. In this thesis, we present the BER performance comparison of ST-COFDM system for IEEE 802.16a under the Rayleigh Flat-Fading channel and Spatial Channel Model (SCM) for MIMO systems. Especially, SCM is a ray-based model where each of N=4 or 6 resolvable multi-paths is modeled by M=20 sub-paths with distinct spatial parameters such as Angle of Arrival or Departure (AoA or AoD).