Performance analysis of combined convolutional coding and space-time block coding with antenna selection

In this paper, we present a comprehensive performance analysis of combined convolutional coding and space-time block coding with receive antenna selection. In our analysis, we assume that the receiver uses only L out of the available M receive antennas, where, typically, L ≤ M. The selected antennas are those that maximize the instantaneous received signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). We derive explicit upper bounds on the bit error rate (BER) performance of the above concatenation scheme for any N, M and L, where N denotes the number of transmit antennas. We show that the diversity order, with antenna selection, is maintained as that of the full complexity system, whereas the deterioration in SNR is upper bounded by 10 log¹⁰ (M/L) dB. We also derive two tighter upper bound on the BER for generalized orthogonal STBCs and the Alamouti scheme when L = 1. Finally, we present simulation results that validate our analysis.