Performance analysis of orthogonal space-time block codes in spatially correlated MIMO Nakagami fading channels

Orthogonal space-time block coding (STBC) is an open-loop transmit diversity scheme that decouples the multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channel, thereby reducing the space-time decoding into a scalar detection process. This characteristic of STBC makes it a powerful tool, achieving full diversity over MIMO fading channels, and requiring little computational cost for both the encoding and decoding processes. In this paper, we exploit the single-input single-output equivalency of STBC in order to analyze its performance over nonselective Nakagami fading channels in the presence of spatial fading correlation. More specifically, we derive exact closed-form expressions for the outage probability and ergodic capacity of STBC, when the latter is employed over spatially correlated MIMO Nakagami fading channels. Moreover, we derive the exact symbol error probability of coherent M-PSK and M-QAM, when these modulation schemes are used along with STBC over such fading channels. The derived formulae are then used to assess the robustness of STBC to spatial correlation by considering general MIMO correlation models and analyzing their effects on the outage probability, ergodic capacity, and symbol error probability achieved by STBC.