ABSTRACT
Next-generation wireless systems aim to support both voice and high capacity flexible data services with limited bandwidth. Multiplicative and additive distortions inherent to the wireless medium make this difficult, and extensive research efforts are focused on developing efficient technologies to support reliable wireless communications. One such technology is multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication systems with multiple antennas at both the transmitter and the receiver. Informationtheoretic analysis in Refs. [1,2] shows that multiple antennas at the transmitter and the receiver enable very high data rates. Another key technology enabling high-rate communications over the wireless channels is orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) [3]. In this chapter, we address and investigate a special class of MIMO, namely, space-time block codes (STBCs), and its application in WiMAX, the next-generation OFDM system based on IEEE 802.16 standard [4,5].
