On performance bounds for space-time coded modulation on fading channels

In this paper, we evaluate truncated union bounds on the frame error rate (FER) performance of selected space-time codes for three di erent channel scenarios and compare them to results of computer simulation. Channels with AWGN, uncorrelated Rayleigh fading, and block Rayleigh fading are considered. To calculate the bounds, we use a superstate trellis approach to characterize codeword di erences according to performance measures derived from a general expression for the exact pairwise error probability (PEP) [1]. We observe that the computed bounds are very accurate for AWGN and uncorrelated fading, but quite loose for block fading. We then generalize the results of [2] to obtain a signi cantly tighter bound for the block fading case.