Space-Time Coding over Fading Channels with Stable Noise

TL;DR

This paper investigates the performance of space-time coding over fading channels affected by impulsive, alpha-stable noise, proposing new receivers that are robust and computationally efficient, with analytical and simulation validation.

Contribution

It introduces a maximum-likelihood receiver for space-time codes under alpha-stable noise and derives error probabilities for different noise models, extending coding theory to impulsive noise environments.

Findings

The asymptotically optimal receiver performs well without noise parameters.

The proposed ML receiver is computationally simple and effective.

Simulation results confirm analytical predictions.

Abstract

This paper addresses the performance of space-time coding over fading channels with impulsive noise which is known to accurately capture network interference. We use the symmetric alpha stable noise distribution and adopt two models which assume dependent and independent noise components across receive antennas. We derive pairwise error probability (PEP) of orthogonal space-time block codes (STBC) with a benchmark genie-aided receiver (GAR), or the minimum distance receiver (MDR) which is optimal in the Gaussian case. For general space-time codes we propose a maximum-likelihood (ML) receiver, and its approximation at high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). The resulting asymptotically optimal receiver (AOR) does not depend on noise parameters and is computationally simple. Monte-Carlo simulations are used to supplement our analytical results and compare the performance of the receivers.