Theoretical performance analysis of single and multiple antenna BFWA systems

The systems under investigation are broadband fixed wireless access (BFWA) systems operating in multipath fading channels. Conventional detection methods, e.g., coherent detection for single-input, single-output (SISO) systems and the Alamouti algorithm for multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) systems are examined theoretically in this paper and shown to yield unsatisfactory performance. The theoretical analyses are validated by Monte-Carlo simulations and are demonstrated to be accurate. The asymptotic performance of the space-time block coded (STBC) system with the Alamouti transmission scheme is also evaluated. However, the results indicate that the performance lower bound cannot be obtained in an uncoded system due to the error propagation problem, which can be tackled by concatenating the STBC system with an outer channel code and applying the turbo processing principle. The theoretical performance analysis conducted in this paper give us an insight into the physical limitations imposed by the BFWA channels and suggest solutions to improve the capacity and performance of future BFWA systems.