Capacity, BER and coding gain analysis for rate one QSTBC: A general approach

Recently, the statistical properties of the equivalent channel representation of a multiple-input-multiple output (MIMO) system employing rate one quasi-orthogonal space-time block codes (QSTBC) was characterized. Based on these characterizations we analyze the average mutual information, the bit-error-rate-performance, and the coding gain for any number of receive and transmit antennas. We derive a closed form expressions for the average mutual information achievable with QSTBC. We also derive a lower bound on the bit-error-performance for QSTBC. Furthermore, we also study a geometric approach for precoding in order to maximize the coding gain or equivalently diversity product and to achieve full diversity QSTBC with rate one symbol per channel use. In particular, we present an upper bound on the diversity product.