Space and Path Diversity : Theoretical Matched Filter Bound and Comparison to Diversity Gain Obtained with Practical

MLSE Receivers
L. Husson, A. Wautier SUPLEC Service Radiolectricit et lectronique 3 rue Joliot-Curie, Plateau de Moulon 91192 Gif-sur-Yvette, France lionel.husson@supelec.fr, armelle.wautier@supelec.fr
ABSTRACT Performance of space diversity techniques is considered for transmissions in mobile radio environments. Optimal performances are derived for any multipath Rayleigh fading channel for Nth-order diversity whenever the signals delivered by the antennas are correlated or not. The proposed theoretical study, illustrated for 2PSK, is suitable for any other modulation schemes (constellation, symbol rate, filter shaping) to evaluate optimal performance of existing or future digital systems including imperfect channel estimation on fast varying channels. Matched filter bound performance is compared to practical receivers behavior. Simulations have been carried out in the case of the GSM system for second order diversity considering two practical receiver structures based on MLSE (maximum-likelihood sequence-estimator). The theoretical results and simulations show that second order diversity can be used in practical to considerably improve the BER performance or to improve the link budget of the transmission. are uncorrelated or when they are correlated (insufficiently spaced antennas). We apply these results in the case of the TU0 channel proposed by the COST 207 [3] for mobile radio systems such as GSM. In Section IV we display simulation results for transmissions over mobile radio channels with two structures of receivers using the MLSE. For the most efficient structure, second order diversity is shown to provide a significant gain in the signal to noise ratio (SNR). Finally, Section V concludes the paper. 2. OPTIMAL PERFORMANCE FOR ANY MULTIPATH RAYLEIGH FADING CHANNELS Let us consider a binary modulated signal, the baseband equivalent signal can be written as: s(t) =Ts si g(t iTs)
i

(1)

where Ts is the symbol period, symbols si take with equal probabilities the values +A or -A, and g(t) is the shaping pulse used in the transmitter. The propagation channel is assumed to be a mobile radio channel with m+1 Rayleigh fading paths : c (t ) =

1. INTRODUCTION In TDMA mobile radio systems, the propagation channel causes perturbation effects on the transmission link (attenuation, distortions and fluctuations). In order to get rid of inter-symbol interference (ISI) consecutive to the multipath propagation, the receiver needs an equalizer. Usually, when its complexity is not prohibitive, a maximum-likelihood sequence-estimation (MLSE) receiver is preferred due to its ability to recover the transmitted symbols with an error probability close to the optimum. However, in the case of deep fading in the received signal (destructive recombination of signals coming from several propagation paths), the receiver may not achieve sufficiently low bit error rate (BER). Space diversity is a way to considerably improve the BER performance. Several antennas are used by the receiver. When the antennas are sufficiently spaced, the received signals can be considered as independent and the probability that they both fade at the same time is drastically reduced. Consequently the performance is expected to be improved. The paper is structured as follows. Section II describes how optimal performance is evaluated for transmissions over any multipath Rayleigh-fading channel. In Section III space diversity is considered. We evaluate the matched filter bound (MFB) for spatial diversity with N antennas either when the signals delivered by antennas

k=0

k zk (t - k)

(2)

where k2 and k are the average power and the delay of path number k and zk is a complex, zero-mean, unitary gaussian variable. The received signal r(t) is the signal transmitted through the channel affected by an additional white gaussian noise n(t) having a two-sided density No (fig. 1). r(t) =

k zk (t - k) *Ts si g(t iTs) + n(t)

k=0 i

(3)

n(t) pulse shaping g(t) channel c(t) r(t)

s(t)

receiver

Figure 1. Baseband equivalent model for the transmission The instantaneous SNR, b, is expressed by :

b =

A2Ts H z Mz 2No
*

n1(t)

(4)
channel c1(t) . . . s(t) pulse shaping g(t) . . . . . . channel ci(t) . . . channel cN(t) + r1(t)

with z=(zi ) and Mij = k.i R(k-i ) and R(t) being the autocorrelation function of g(t) M is a non-negative-definite Hermitian matrix with positive eigenvalues (i ) which are depending on the power-delay profile of the channel and on the pulse shaping. A diagonal (D) and an orthonormal (Q) matrices can be found such as QMQH =D, it follows that [7] : b = A2Ts |z' |2 2No i i
i=0 m

Nth order ri(t) spatial + diversity receiver N n (t) + rN(t)

ni(t)

(5)

with z' = Q z , whose elements are zero-mean unitary gaussian variables. The matched filter bound is the limit of the achievable performance. The optimal bit error probability is directly related to the SNR. It is shown in [5] that the average bit error rate PE(b) corresponding to an average SNR b can be derived for any multipath Rayleigh fading channel and be expressed as a function of the eigenvalues (i ). 3. OPTIMAL PERFORMANCE FOR DIVERSITY COMBINING

Figure 2. Baseband equivalent model for a transmission with Nth order spatial diversity Numerical results are presented for transmissions over the TU0 model (typical urban environment with mobile speed equal to zero kilometer per hour) proposed by the COST 207 [3] when using spatial diversity of order N with uncorrelated signals. Modulation scheme is 2PSK with square root raised cosine pulse shape (roll-off =0.5). Transmission rate is 270.833 kbits/s. Figure 3 displays the average error probability as a function of the average global SNR b.
10
0

A. Uncorrelated antennas Let us consider a receiver with N antennas spaced enough such that the received signals are uncorrelated (fig. 2). Considering that all the noises are independent and have the same density No, we can evaluate the performance of the spatial diversity with optimal combining by considering that the global instantaneous SNR is the addition of the instantaneous SNR on each antenna. bi and bi denote the instantaneous and average signal-to-noise ratios on antenna number i and by b and b the instantaneous and average global signal-to-noise ratios [8] [2]. Considering all antennas having the same gain, the autocorrelation of the received signal (denoted by M) is identical for each antenna. The computation of the optimal average error probability is similar to the one previously seen, considering the global (N.m by N.m) matrix M :

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1 2 3 4 5 6 7
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Figure 3. Optimal performances for spatial diversity with uncorrelated signals on TU0 channel model. Parameter N is the order of diversity ; N=1 (no diversity), 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, Considering the global SNR makes it possible to evaluate the improvement in the performance due to diversity regarding to the power of the received signal, this is called the diversity gain. For the TU0 model when considering an average BER target of 5 10-3 the diversity gain is of 2.7 dB for second order diversity and of 3.8 dB for third order diversity (asymptotically this gain would be of 5.9 dB). The additive diversity gain is the most significant for second order diversity and decreases with the increase of the order, which means a limited interest of high diversity systems.

M=

...

M M 0 ... M
0

(6)

The eigenvalues of M are the ones of M with an order multiplied by N.

B. Correlated antennas When antennas are not spaced enough, the received signals are correlated between each other. Let us assume that all the antennas have the same gain and that the correlation rate is the same between all antennas : . The previous computation can be used by replacing in the formula (6) M by :

4.

PRACTICAL RECEIVERS

A. Degradation due to imperfect channel estimate Optimal theoretical performance can also be derived from the matched filter bound including degradation due to imperfect channel knowledge from the receiver. This degradation has been evaluated for single antenna equalizers in [11] and can be easily included in this analysis.
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M=

M ... M M M

... M

(7)
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Figure 4 displays the BER performance as a function of the average global SNR b for binary transmission over TU0 channel using spatial diversity with order two for correlation rate between 0 and 1. The diversity gain, which is obviously null for =1, is close to its maximum as soon as is lower than 0.4 (this is obtained when the antennas are spaced of approximately 20 [1]; which corresponds to 6 meters for GSM 900 ). This behavior is also illustrated on figure 5 which represents the average BER at b = 9 dB as a function of which confirms the results established by simulations in [4].
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20

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Figure 6. Optimal performances for spatial diversity with imperfect channel estimate on TU0 channel model; spatial diversity orders are 1, 2, 3. Figure 6 illustrates the channel estimation degradation over a time-invariant TU0 channel ; channel estimate is realized on a training sequence composed of a CAZAC (Constant amplitude zero-autocorrelation) sequence of length 16 and of 5 repeated symbols in order to estimate 6 samples of the channel response. When channel error is only due to noise, the gain of diversity remains identical to the one derived for perfect channel estimation (i. e., 2.7 dB for second order and 3.8 dB for third order when considering an average BER target of 5 10-3).
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1 0

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Figure 4. Optimal performances for spatial diversity with two correlated antennas on TU0 channel model; parameter is the rate of correlation between the signals delivered by antennas = 0, 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.5, 0.6, 0.7, 0.8, 0.9, 1
BER

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correlation rate

Figure 5. BER as a function of correlation rate at b =9 dB on TU0 channel model. Parameter: order of diversity N=2 or 3

Figure 7. Optimal performances for spatial diversity with time-varying channel in absence of tracking estimation on TU300 channel model; spatial diversity orders are 1, 2, 3

Figure 7 shows the performance on a time-varying TU300 channel (fd Ts= 9 10-4) in absence of tracking channel estimation over 58 information symbols. As the time variations of the channel deteriorate the BER performance for high SNRs, the impact of diversity is reinforced ; the diversity gain is of 3.4 dB for second order and of 4.6 dB for third order, when considering an average BER target of 5 10-3. B. MLSE-based receivers For flat fading channels, selection combining, maximum ratio combining and equal gain combining are classical diversity structures [8]. In the case of frequency-selective channels, diversity can be applied either by the combining of the received signals before the equalizer [9] or by the integration of diversity in the structure of the MLSE equalizer. Practical methods for implementing two-order spatial diversity in MLSE receivers are studied in [6].
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Figs 8 and 9 display the average BER performance as a function of b for diversity in the case of transmissions over TU0 channel; the channel is either perfectly estimated (Fig. 8) or estimated with the training sequence (Fig. 9). The performance of the chosen structures for the implementation of second order diversity (SS and MC) is compared to each other and to the boundaries of optimal diversity and no diversity.
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no diversity

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SS MC

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no diversity

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SS MC

Figure 9. TU0 model : BER performance for MLSE receiver (channel estimated with the training sequence) in the cases: no diversity, SS method, MC method. The MFB curve is the optimal performance for diversity of order 2 Figure 8 shows that, in the case of perfect channel estimation, the MC method leads to BER performance close to the optimum (less than 1 dB of loss in SNR) ; the SS method is less efficient, leading to a loss in SNR of 1.5 dB in comparison with the MC method. Figure 7 shows that, due to the estimation of the channel response, the performance is affected of a loss in SNR of 1.5 dB. For an average BER target of 5 10-3, the diversity gain in SNR is of 1.6 dB for the SS method and of 3.1 dB for MC method. It is possible to evaluate the diversity gain in the link budget by considering the partial SNR which is related to the power of the emitted signal. This overall gain is the sum of the gain in the received power due to the addition of antennas (i.e. 10log(N) dB) and the diversity gain. In the TU0 model, the overall second-order diversity gain in SNR is of 4.6 dB for the SS method and of 6.1 dB for MC method, for an average BER target of 5.10-3. 5. CONCLUSION The performance of the receiver in the case of transmissions over mobile radio channels can be improved by resorting to spatial diversity. We derived the optimum performance achievable by spatial diversity considering the order of the diversity N and the correlation between the received signals for any multipath Rayleigh-fading channel. Results applied to 2PSK transmissions over the TU0 model (typical urban environment with mobile speed equal to zero kilometer per hour) proposed by COST 207 can easily be

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MFB
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Figure 8. BER performance with a MLSE receiver with perfect channel estimation on TU0 in the following cases: no diversity, SS method, MC method. The MFB curve is the optimal performance for diversity of order 2 We compare the performances of two implementation methods. The first method, sample selection (SS), consists in selecting the received signal with the greatest power and forgetting the others (which is a combining of the received signals with coefficients being either 1for the selected channel-or 0-for the others-). In the other method, metric combining (MC), the metric used in the Viterbi algorithm of the MLSE equalizer is the sum of the metrics corresponding to each diversity channel. We have chosen the SS method for its very low complexity and MC method for its efficient performances. Simulations have been carried out for 3000 GSM bursts over COST 207 channels with two uncorrelated antennas. As in GSM system, used modulation is GMSK (BT=0.3) with bit rate equal to 270,833 kbits/s. Bursts are composed of 2*58 information bits and a 26bit training sequence used for the estimation of the channel response. Performances are compared with derived optimal diversity (matched filter bound with perfect estimation of channel) and in absence of diversity technique.

extrapolated for other modulation schemes (constellation, symbol rate, filter shaping) [10]. Results of simulations are displayed for GSM-like transmissions over the TU0 model. The considered receivers are based on MLSE adapted to spatial diversity either by selection of the best signal to process (SS method) or by modifying the computation of the metric used by the Viterbi algorithm (MC method). It is shown that, in the considered case, an additive antenna (second order diversity) can improve the link budget by approximately 6.1 dB (3.1 dB of diversity gain in SNR and 3 dB due to the increasing in the received power) if the antennas are sufficiently spaced. REFERENCES [1] F. Adachi et al., "Crosscorrelation between the envelopes of 900 MHz signals received at a mobile base station site", Proc IEE, vol. 133, Pt. F, no. 6, pp. 506-512, Oct 1986. [2] P. Balaban, J. Salz, "Optimum diversity combining and equalization in digital data transmission with applications to cellular mobile radio," IEEE Trans. Commun., vol. 40, pp. 885-907, May 1992. [3] M. Failli (chairman), Digital land mobile radio communications, COST 207 final report, CEC Inf. Technol. And Sciences, Brussels, pp. 135-166, 1989 [4] B. D. Hart & al., "MLSE for correlated diversity sources and unknown time-varying frequencyselective Rayleigh-fading channels", IEEE Trans. Commun.,, vol. 46, no. 2, pp. 169-172, Feb. 1998. [5] L. Husson, "valuation par le rcepteur de la qualit du signal reu dans les systmes de radiocommunication avec les mobiles et amlioration des performances par l'galisation conditionnelle", thse soutenue le 26 janvier 1998, Universit Paris XI, Orsay, France [6] R. Krenz & al. , "Comparative study of spacediversity techniques for MLSE receivers in mobile radio", IEEE Trans. Vehic. Technol. , vol. 46, no. 3, pp. 653-663, Aug. 1997. [7] F. Ling, "Matched filter bound for time-discrete multipath Rayleigh fading channels," IEEE Trans. Commun., vol. 43, pp. 710-713, Feb. 1995. [8] Schwartz and al. ,Communications systems and techniques, Mc Graw-Hill, 1966. [9] S. H. Tseng, "Optimum diversity combining and equalization over interference-limited cellular radio channel", IEEE Trans. Vehic. Technol. , vol. 47, no. 1, pp. 103-118, Feb. 1998. [10] L. Husson, A. Wautier, J. Antoine, Apport de la diversit pour la transmission de paquets dans un rseau sans fil, Alcatel internal report, Jan. 1999. [11] A. Wautier, J.-C. Dany, C. Mourot, V. Kumar, "A new method for predicting the channel estimate influence on performance of TDMA mobile radio systems", IEEE Trans. Vehic. Technol. , vol. 44, no. 3, pp. 594-602, Aug. 1995.