International Conference on Electrical, Electronics, and Optimization Techniques (ICEEOT) - 2016

Design and Performance Analysis of MIMO- OFDM

System Using Different Antenna configurations

Arun Agarwal* Saurabh N. Mehta

Department of ECE, ITER Department of Electronics and Telecommunication
Siksha ‘O’ Anusandhan University, Khandagiri Square Engineering,
Bhubaneswar-751030, Odisha, India Vidyalankar Institute of Technology, Mumbai, Maharashtra,
*
Ph.D Scholar, Department of Information Technology, India.
AMET University, Tamil Nadu, Chennai, India saurabh.n.mehta@gmail.com
arunagrawal@soauniversity.ac.in

Abstract—The key challenge faced by future wireless transmitted on separate subcarriers. In short, it is a kind of
communications systems is to provide high-data-rate wireless multi-carrier digital communication method [1]. OFDM has
access at high quality of service (QOS). Multiple-input multiple- been around for about 40 years and it was first conceived in
output (MIMO) wireless technology seems to meet these demands the 1960s and 1970s during research into minimizing
by offering increased spectral efficiency through spatial interference among channels near each other in frequency.
multiplexing gain, and improved link reliability due to antenna OFDM has been proposed as a transmission method to support
diversity gain. OFDM may be combined with antenna arrays at high-speed data transmission over wireless links in multipath
the transmitter and receiver to increase bandwidth efficiency and environments.
robustness using multipath signal propagation, resulting in a
MIMO-OFDM configuration. The forward error correction By combining MIMO system with OFDM technique the
(FEC) along with powerful interleaving algorithms plays an desired system requirements, such as good coverage in non-
important role in the improvement of the performance of the line-of-sight environment, reliable transmission, high peak
MIMO-OFDM systems.. In this paper we have designed a simple data rates as well as high spectral efficiency, may be fulfilled.
MIMO OFDM system with convolutional coding with code rate Multi-stream multi-carrier wireless transmission has been
½ and analysed the performance of the system using different already standardized in IEEE 802.11n WLAN, IEEE 802.16
antenna configuration in AWGN channel. It was concluded WMAN, IEEE 802.16 WiMAX as well as in 3GPP Long
higher antenna configuration give best performance. Term Evolution (LTE) and it will be the key transmission
technology for the upcoming 4G broadband wireless
Keywords—MIMO, OFDM, BER, FEC, QOS, high data rate, communication networks [2]. The forward error correction
link reliability. (FEC) mechanism plays an important role in the performance
of MIMO-OFDM systems. One aspect of the MIMO-OFDM
I. INTRODUCTION system that has not been investigated adequately is the use of
The key challenge faced now days by future wireless different antenna configurations.
communications systems is to provide high-data-rate wireless
access at high quality of service (QOS). Combined with the II. MULTIPLE INPUT- MULTIPLE OUTPUT SYSTEM
facts that spectrum is a limited resource and propagation Most wireless communication systems use Single Input
conditions are unfriendly due to fading and interference from Single Output (SISO) systems where a single transmit (Tx)
other users, this requirement calls for means to radically antenna is used for transmission to a single receive (Rx)
increase spectral efficiency and improve link reliability. antenna. Additional transmitting antennas and receiving
Recently MIMO-OFDM systems have gained considerable antennas can be used to provide better result at the receiver. In
attentions from the leading industry companies and the active the days this scenario is likely to change with the advent of
academic community. The MIMO system as a system with Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) communication
multiple antennas at the transmitter and the receiver systems. Commonly, MIMO techniques have three categories.
theoretically allows linear growth of the link capacity. The First category uses the increasing of spatial diversity to
capacity is proportional to the rank of MIMO channel. While enhance the power efficiency. While, the other category aims
high spectral efficiency can be obtained through spatial to increase the capacity by using layered method. Lastly, by
multiplexing, many other MIMO systems benefits such as knowledge the properties of the transmission channel; the
improved signal quality and coverage can be achieved via third class analyses the coefficient matrix of the channel and
spatial diversity, beam forming space time coding and uses these analyzing unitary matrices as filter in transmitter
interface cancellation. and receiver to improve the capacity.
Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) is a MIMO wireless systems employ multiple transmitter and
digital modulation in which the data stream is split into N receiver antennas, and increase system capacity by means of
parallel streams of reduced data rate with each of them

978-1-4673-9939-5/16/$31.00 ©2016 IEEE

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spatial multiplexing, making use of the same frequency The receiver with multi-antenna can separate and decode
resources that would be utilized by a SISO system. As the data stream by using advanced space-time coding, and get
opposed to conventional SISO systems, MIMO systems the best processing method. In particular, because the N sub-
benefit from multipath propagation and multiply transfer rates streams are sent to the channel at the same time and each
by taking advantage of random fading and multipath delay transmitted signal occupies the same frequency band, the
spread. In addition, MIMO provides spatial diversity both at bandwidth is not increased. If the channels are independent,
the transmitter and the receiver, thus improving the the MIMO system can create a number of parallel space
transmission quality in terms of the bit-error rate (BER). channels. It is sure to increase the data rate by using these
channels to transmit information independently.
Spatial multiplexing has been generally used to increase
the capacity of a MIMO link by transmitting independent data A. MIMO Channel Capacity
streams in the same time slot and frequency band For the case of MIMO the capacity will be given by
simultaneously from each transmit antenna, and differentiating
multiple data streams at the receiver using channel
= [ ( + ℎℎ )] (3)
information about each propagation path, future standards
need to specify both bandwidth requirements and type of Where is the identity matrix, the vector h represents the
signaling that achieves the data rate required for minimal channel gain or transfer function between the single Tx
predefined qualities of services for future applications. antenna and the Rx antenna array, and ℎ is the Hermitian
Figure 1 presents the general structure of an M x N MIMO transpose of h, where H is the N x M MIMO channel matrix.
wireless system. It can be seen that the MIMO channel is an N
III. ORTHOGONAL FREQUENCY DIVISION MULTIPLEXING SYSTEM
x M matrix channel consisting of M·N sub channels. The
MIMO system can also be viewed as a combination of Figure 3 below depicts the basic block diagram of an
multiple transmit beam formers, each transmitting to one of OFDM Transceiver. OFDM is a combination of modulation
the m Rx antenna. In [5], the authors have described that, The and multiplexing. Multiplexing generally refers to independent
MIMO technology is a very effective method of increasing the signals, those produced by different sources. In OFDM the
capacity of the channel and system. We suppose that the question of multiplexing is applied to independent signals but
number of the transmitting antennas is M , transmitted signal these independent signals are a sub-set of the one main signal.
is x (t), j=1,…,M , the number of the receiving antennas is In OFDM the signal itself is first split into independent
M , received signal is y (t) ,i=1,…, M , then the relation channels, modulated by data and then re-multiplexed to create
between the transmitted signal and received signal is written the OFDM carrier.
as:
( )=∑ ℎ, ( )∗ ( )+ ( ), = 0,1, … …
(1)
Where, ℎ , (t) denotes the channel impulse response
between the transmitting antenna of number j and the
receiving antenna of number i. The channel of the MIMO
system can be expressed by a matrix:

ℎ , ( )ℎ , ( ) … ℎ , ( )
⎡ ⎤
ℎ ( )ℎ ( ) … ℎ ( )
( ) = ⎢⎢ , , , ⎥
⎥ (2)
⎢ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⎥
⎣ℎ , ( )ℎ , ( ) … ℎ , ( ) ⎦ Fig. 2. Block Diagram of MIMO System [13]

Fig. 3. Block Diagram of OFDM System.

Fig. 1. M x N MIMO System

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A. Impotance of Orthogonality
The main concept in OFDM is orthogonality of the sub-
carriers. The "orthogonal" part of the OFDM name indicates ℎ ( )= ( − ) (4)
that there is a precise mathematical relationship between the
frequencies of the carriers in the system. It is possible to =Complex path gain
arrange the carriers in an OFDM Signal so that the sidebands =Normalized path delay relative to LOS
of the individual carriers overlap and the signals can still be ∆ = - difference in patha time
received without adjacent carriers’ interference. In order to do The BER performance of an OFDM signal in a fading
this the carriers must be mathematically orthogonal. The channel is much better than the performance of QPSK/FDM
Carriers are linearly independent (i.e. orthogonal) if the carrier which is single carrier wideband signal.
spacing is a multiple of 1/Ts. Where, Ts is the symbol
duration. The orthogonality among the carriers can be IV. MIMO- OFDM
maintained if the OFDM signal is defined by using Fourier MIMO-OFDM has been currently recognized as one of the
transform procedures. The OFDM system transmits a large most competitive technology for 4G and beyond mobile
number of narrowband carriers, which are closely spaced. wireless systems. Recently, there has been a lot of interest in
Note that at the central frequency of the each sub channel combining the MIMO with the OFDM systems because of the
there is no crosstalk from other sub channels. increased demand for multimedia applications.
B. Fading MIMO signaling can improve wireless communication
system in two ways such as diversity methods and spatial
The attraction of OFDM is mainly because of its way of
multiplexing. Diversity methods improve the robustness of the
handling the multipath interference at the receiver. Multipath
communication system in terms of BER by exploiting the
phenomenon generates two effects (a) Frequency selective
fading and (b) Intersymbol interference (ISI). The "flatness" multiple paths between transmit and receive antennas. Two
perceived by a narrow-band channel overcomes the frequency important schemes available in spatial diversity methods are
selective fading. On the other hand, modulating symbols at a Space Time Block Codes (STBC) and Space Time Trellis
very low rate makes the symbols much longer than channel Codes (STTC) [13]. STBC techniques provide maximum
impulse response and hence reduces the ISI. transmit diversity advantage by using simple decoding
techniques. Figure 6 presents a MIMO-OFDM system.
V. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
Here we present the simulation results along with following
parameters taken for simulation using MATLAB version 14b.
The figure 7 shows the symbol error rate performance of m-
ary PSK and QAM modulation technique used in MIMO
OFDM transmission scheme. The channel noise is considered
as additive white Gaussian. The channel is considered as flat
having no multipath delays. QAM modulation technique is
hybrid modulation scheme where the symbols are
distinguished in amplitude as well as in phase. Here we have
used 2 transmitting antennas as well as 2 receiving antennas
Here we can observe that BPSK has the better BER
Fig. 4.Example of OFDM for 5 orthogonal carrier performance than QPSK and 16-QAM in lower SNR value.
But it can only transmit 1 bit per symbol. So it is not suitable
for high data rate.

Fig. 5.Fading in multipath propagation. Fig. 6.Block diagram of a MIMO- OFDM system [5].

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 TABLE I. PARAMETERS USED FOR SIMULATION MIMO-OFDM system 1x1,1x2, 1x4, 1x8
0
10
System Parameter Parameter Value 1x1
1x2
Modulation BPSK, QPSK, 16-QAM -1 1x4
10
1x8

Bandwidth 20 MHz
-2
Number of subcarriers 52 10

BER
Number of data subcarriers 48
-3
10

Length of Cyclic prefix 16

-4
10
FFT/IFFT length 64
Convolutional coding rate 1/2
-5
10
0 5 10 15 20 25
Channel used AWGN SNR in dB

Fig. 8.MIMO-OFDM system 1 x 1, 1 x 2, 1 x 4, 1 x 8

0
MIMO-OFDM system bpsk vs qpsk vs 16qam Figure 9 shows the BER performance of 2x2 vs 4x4 vs 8x8
10
bpsk
MIMO system. Here we have used 16-QAM modulation
16qam scheme to calculate the BER performance. We can observe
-1
10
qpsk here that as we go on increasing the number of transmitting
antenna as well as number of receiving antennas we will get
better BER and the SNR value is also decreasing. In this
-2
10 figure 8 x 8 MIMO system has the better BER in lower SNR.
BER

0
MIMO-OFDM system 2x2 vs 4x4 vs 8x8
-3 10
10
2x2
4x4
-1 8x8
-4 10
10

-2
-5
10
10
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20
BER

SNR in dB
-3
10

Fig. 7.BER performance of BPSK, QPSK and 16-QAM modulation technique

Figure 8 shows the BER performance graph of 1x1 vs 1x2

-4
10

vs 1x4 vs 1x8 MIMO OFDM system using 16-QAM

modulation technique. Here the transmitting antenna is fixed -5
that is 1 and the receiving antennas are varying. We can see 10
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18
that the more the number of receiving antennas than the SNR in dB

transmitting antenna the better is the BER performance. In this

figure 1 x 8 MIMO system can give better BER performance Fig. 9.MIMO-OFDM system 2 x 2, 4 x 4, 8 x 8
among all others. Here as the transmitting antenna is fixed to
one so it is also called as the Single input multiple output We finally compare the BER performance of different
(SIMO) system. antenna configuration in the following table.

TABLE II. SNR COMPARISON FOR DIFFERENT RECEIVE ANTENNA

Antenna
configurations
1x 1x 1x 1x 2x 4x 8x
1 2 4 8 2 4 8

24 21 18 14 18 12 6

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 From this table we can see that 1x8 SIMO system has the proceeding of IFIP International Conference on Wireless and Optical
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