SIMULATION AND PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF BLAST STRUCTURE IN MIMO ENVIRONMENT

Abstract

This paper presents the modeling and simulation of the most innovative MIMO-VBLAST technique. Wireless communication has suffered from the fading problem ever since its first appearance in 1897, when Guglielmo Marconi transmitted a wireless signal to a ship in the English Channel. The following century witnessed the remarkable development of wireless communication, especially in the last decade. The capacity of traditional communication systems along with 1x1 antenna system would be very low because of multi path propagation within radio channels. The multi-path signals add up constructively or destructively at the receiver antenna to give a fluctuating signal, which can vary widely in amplitude and phase. When the amplitude of the signal experiences a low value it is termed fading and the capability of the wireless channel is severely limited. Several efforts into this direction have been carried out to make the radio channel more efficient and this has got remarkable progress. Efficient techniques, such as frequency reuse and OFDM, have been invented to increase the bandwidth efficiency; on the other hand, advances in coding techniques, such as Reed Solemn codes, Convolution codes and low density parity check (LDPC) codes make it possible to almost reach Shannon capacity the theoretical performance limit of the channel. However, the development of the techniques for a single channel has yet to catch up with the increasing demand for the capacity The most promising solution to combat this effect is to have antenna diversity scheme which can be implemented with many of ways such as BLAST structure, STBC coding technique, etc. With the implementation of antenna diversity i.e. MIMO, the capacity of the communication system as well as channel will increase in terms of improved error rate performance. Also with the implementation of BLAST structure the data rate of the communication can be enhanced at the same amount of bandwidth. Ultimately this paper concludes effect of MIMO-BLAST to provide array gain i.e high data rate for modern wireless scenario.