An investigation into the error performance of vertical-bell labs layered space-time architecture V-BLAST

Recent information theory research has shown that the rich-scattering wireless channel is capable of enormous theoretical capabilities if the multipath is properly exploited. In effect, the unavoidable multipath is exploited to provide a very useful spatial parallelism that is used to greatly improve data transmission rates.; The study of statistical distribution of errors is a prerequisite in the design of appropriate coding techniques to effectively control errors. The V-BLAST architecture is analyzed and compared for two transmitter-receiver arrangements (3 x 3), and (6 x 6). (3 x 3) utilizes 9 channel paths while (6 x 6) utilizes 36 channel paths. Utilization of more channel paths improves the overall performance. We analyzed the system performance over Rayleigh and Nakagami channels along with statistical analysis of errors.; For correlated Channel paths (higher m), V-BLAST performance is limited by error propagation. Frequency of occurrences of Error Burst Lengths and Error Free Intervals are determined. Modelling of the distribution of Error Burst Lengths and Error Free Lengths is performed. We also analyzed all the above parameters when well renowned Turbo Coding is applied. We evaluated the effects of different interleaver depths where the interleavers used are cyclic shift interleavers. It is shown that the increase in the number of transmitters and receivers, and de-correlation in channel paths give improved performance.