2017 IEEE 30th Canadian Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering (CCECE)

Experimental Alamouti-STBC Using LDPC Codes

for MIMO Channels over SDR Systems
Ricardo Prieto1 , Ana Abril2 , Andres Ortega3
{rprieto1 , aabril2 }@est.ups.edu.ec, aortega@ups.edu.ec3
Universidad Politecnica Salesiana.
Grupo de Investigacion de Telecomunicaciones (GITEL).
Cuenca, ECUADOR.

Abstract—The legacy access networks should provide higher
capacity, rate and spectral efficiency due to high demand of data
transmission. In this context our proposal is the combining of
LDPC codes with MIMO systems channels in order to improve
the reliability and capacity in the transmission for massive
connectivity. This system is proposed for the development of
new technologies over SDR systems. MIMO techniques such
as Alamouti-STBC offer some benefits such as greater network
access capabilities that help to make transmission more reliable,
while LDPC codes give higher transmission reliability because
they have a good error correction codes and offer an approxima-
tion to the limit of capacity established by Shannon. The results
show that the BER performance and the capacity improves
when the Rayleigh channel is used. In this context, the system
can support high quality of information and high rates in the
transmission. In addition, we present the techniques of frame
synchronization for real transmission as Barker codes, in order
to reduce the error of transmission.
Index Terms—LDPC, MIMO, Alamouti, STBC, SDR, Barker
codes.
I. I NTRODUCTION
The wireless communications developments towards 5G
systems, they are an interesting point for researchers and even
more attractive is the optimization of parameters such as: data
rate [1], capacity, throughput, spectral efficiency, interference
among others. For this reason, the challenges for improving
quality services are wireless systems designs even more robust,
capable to support the strong demand of connectivity on
mobile devices.
MIMO techniques [2] as Alamouti STBC scheme [1] are de-
veloped to give more capacity over network access legacy [3],
improving the spectral efficiency in terms of Peak-Average-
Power-Ratio (PAPR) through the power transmission in the
channel when the subcarriers are increased.
However, there are few works in literature that used the
combination among spatial modulation and MIMO in order to
model the beam-forming technique, being today the approach
of 5G mobile communications [4].
To ensure the low packet loss of transmitted data, Low
Density Parity Check (LDPC) codes [5] are used in the
block channel coding, improving in this way the performance
system. Nowadays, LDPC codes have been adopted for many
standard in wireless protocols such as 802.16 (WIMAX)
[6], DVB-S2 [7] [8], being also a leading candidate for 5G
access network. Actually, the access networks for 5G are
not standardized, but nevertheless, Huawei research’s have
developed a state-of-the-art called ”Sparce Code Multiple
Access” (SCMA)[9], which allows the massive connectivity
and improves the spectral efficiency in comparison with Filter
Bank Multicarrier (FBMC) system. Nevertheless, in [10] a
technique as GFDM (Generalized Frequency Division Mul-
tiplexing) for multi-access is developed in order to improve
the spectral efficiency and distortion effects whit non-linearity
channel. In this way, we system can be easily adapted to
GFDM with the aim to improve even more the capacity and
the throughput.
SCMA is a robust system for the access network because it
contains diversity techniques that combine spatial modulation
with Multi User MIMO, giving more capacity and high rate
of data transmission.
On another hand, LDPC codes can be combined with
MIMO systems and spatial modulation. In [11] is shown
that LPDC codes is better with respect to Turbo codes in
terms of Shannon Capacity limit using MIMO system. The
LDPC codes can be even more reliable in the presence of
fading channel [12] with respect to another codes, but their
parallel processing is an advantage for the implementation.
Nevertheless, the current trend in communication systems
development for PHY layer is through Software-Defined Radio
(SDR), which allows to solve the problem of parallel signal
processing [13].
In order to implement a robust processing through SDR
for communications systems of high performance, we propose
a system that combines existent techniques, addressing at
networks access with 5G requirements. In this context, LDPC
codes are implemented for channel coding with different rates,
and M-QAM mapping using frame synchronization in order
to achieve an efficient and reliable transmission with high rate
transmission. MIMO system is added with the aim to optimize
the spectral efficiency, capacity and system performance using
Alamouti Scheme. The system is modeled over Rayleigh
Fading Channel, where the results show that the capacity can
be increased at 2bps/Hz due to combining of LDPC codes with
MIMO 3x4. In this way the system over SDR outperform other
systems being an important contribution for access networks
of next generation.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In Section II
we describe the system model. Simulation Results are shown
in Section III. Finally, conclusions are given in Section IV.

978-1-5090-5538-8/17/$31.00 ©2017 IEEE

 2017 IEEE 30th Canadian Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering (CCECE)

II. S YSTEM M ODEL

Our proposal is to design a communication system TX/RX J = argmax< [m] (2)
m
over Software Defined Radio as is shown in Fig.1. This system
is implemented in GNU Radio with Simulink platform in Then, from the maximum value onwards the signal to be
order to perform signal processing over graphical interface. In demodulated by M-QAM decoder will be: Sb [m] − t [g]
this context, we have used the NI-USRP 2920 whit 30dB of
power limit, also due to MIMO implementation, is necessary B. LDPC codes design
to consider the synchronization protocol for the receiver.
Low density parity check (LDPC) is considered into linear
block codes, providing a close capacity to Shanons Theory,
A. Synchronization Process which are suitable to work when the interference is increased.
In order to know the header frame sent, training sequences The redundancy bits are introduced in order to build the
are added for the synchronization process. In this context codeword. In this way, (m x n) parity-check matrix H
before coding process the sequences are introduced in the generates the codeword to be sent through Gnxk sparse matrix,
transmitter side. The training sequences are codewords bits if and only if:
with auto correlation properties, which should be known in
the receiver and transceiver respectively. H = [A, Ik−n ] (3)
The Barker codes are subsets of sequences used for data
where A is a matrix (k − n) × n and I(k−n) is the identity
synchronization in digital communications. There are different
matrix. Therefore, the generator matrix is defined by:
Barker codes lengths, being the maximum length l = 13 as is
In order to obtain the G matrix, Gauss-Jordan method is
shown in the Table I.
applied from H matrix in this way:
TABLE I
BARKER C ODES G = [In , AT ] (4)
Code Length Barker Code where G is orthogonal to H, therefore must satisfy the next
1 [-1] equation:
2 [-1 1]
3 [-1 -1 1]
4 [-1 -1 1 -1] G · HT = 0 (5)
5 [-1 -1 -1 1 -1]
7 [-1 -1 -1 1 1 -1 1] In the transmission side, the source information vector d[n]
11 [-1 -1 -1 1 1 1 -1 1 1 -1 1]
13 [-1 -1 -1 -1 -1 1 1 -1 -1 1 -1 1 -1] is multiplied by Gnxk in order to build a codeword of length
n < k.
The data rate is multiplied by the code rate R = n/k, and
The process to build the frame in the transmitter side, results
thus is decreased by the addition of (n−k) redundant bits. The
from the addition of training sequence t[4l] and the source
parity check matrix could be generated in several ways. In this
information b[u], where the amount of information to be sent
paper, we generate the H matrix from irregular Gallager codes,
are 32400 random bits.
according to the bit stream transmitted, where n = u + 4l =
In Fig. 2, the training sequence or Header is defined by
32400, k = 64800 resulting a H matrix of dimension n x k.
Unipolar Barker Code where their length is 4-times incre-
LDPC has a Tanner graph that provides a complete repre-
mented due to the correlation properties. When the length
sentation of the code and it helps the decoding algorithm in the
sequence is increase, the synchronization improves.
receiver side. A Tanner graph contains the variables nodes and
In order to obtain the synchronization process using Barker
check nodes, each of the nodes is a processor that conveys the
Codes in the receiver side, the correlations between the train-
probabilistic information, e.g., log-likelihood ratios (LLRs).
ing sequence and the receiver signal is applied in the following
A hard decision decoder is considered for the receiver side
equation 1 [14]:
using the Sum-Product Algorithm (SPA). The optimality crite-
 l−1
X
2
 rion of the SPA decoder is symbol-wise maximum a posteriori
< [m] = 

t [g] Sb [m + g]

(1) (M AP ). However the computing of posteriori probability

g=0
 used in the SDR system is defined by:
X
Where Sb [m] is the received signal after MIMO scheme. In Li = ri + Ej,i (6)
this context, t [g] is obtained through a signal processing where
t [l] is initially converted to a binary data type t0 [l], after this Where Li is the LLR probability, ri is the posteriori prob-
signal is multiplied to 4 times its length as in the transmitter ability of the inputs bits and Ej,i is the extrinsic probability
t0 [4l]. Finally the multiplied signal is modulated with the aim based in check nodes j and bit nodes i, defined in the following
of converting to symbols as is shown in Fig. 3. way.
In order to detect the frame start, the maximum value of the (
p
correlation is obtained according to the length of the Barker ln 1−p ,u = 1
ri = 1−p (7)
Code in this way: ln p , u = 0
 2017 IEEE 30th Canadian Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering (CCECE)

Fig. 1. System Block Diagram.

 
h1,1 ... h1,NT
H=
 .. .. .. 
(10)
. . . 
Fig. 2. Frame Structure. hNR ,1 ··· hNR ,NT
Now we can consider the space-time decoding for the
complex signal X. The we express the received signal in this
way:

Fig. 3. Barker Code Symbol Generation. Y = HX + ξ (11)

where the noise ξ is defined by:
Where u is the incoming bit when p has the probability of
 
NR X
X NT
receiving a bit zero or a bit one. ξ = −1 + 2 |hi,j |2  (12)
 Q  i=1 j=1
1 + tanh (mj,i /2)
Ej,i = log Q (8) The channel gain over MIMO 2x2 is defined in the time t
1 − tanh (mj,i /2)
in this way:
Where, mj,i is the input priority of each bit node.
h1 (t) = h1 (t + T ) (13)
C. Alamouti-STBC scheme for MIMO Channels h2 (t) = h2 (t + T ) (14)
Space-Time Block Code (STBC) is a complex orthogonal Considering the space-time decoding for the complex signal
space-time code where the principal aim is to achieve the X. The expression of the received signal is:
diversity of antennas and implement a efficient detection per-
symbol on the receiver through maximum likelihood (ML). Y1 = h1 x1 + h2 x2 + ξ1 (15)
In this paper, it is combined the LDPC robust codes with
Y2 = −h1 x∗2 + h2 x∗1 + ξ2 (16)
Space-Time Code in order to improve the capacity over
MIMO channels. In addition, the scheme is designed with Where ξ1 and ξ2 is the noise at time t and t+T respectively.
NT = 2, NR = 2 and NT = 3, NR = 4, where NT For MIMO 3x4 is defined through the following equations:
and NR are the antennas number of transmitter and receiver
respectively. Then, the codeword matrix is defined by the 
x1 −x2 −x3 −x4 x∗1 −x∗2 −x∗4
−x∗3

complex Alamouti-STBC of X for MIMO 2x2 in this way: X = x2 x1 x4 −x3 x∗2 x∗1 x∗4
−x∗3 
x3 −x4 x1 x2 x∗3 −x∗4 x∗1
x∗2
x1 −x∗2
 
X= (9) (17)
x2 x∗1 Where x1 , x2 , x3 and x4 are defined by the combination of
Where x1 and x2 are two consecutive symbols. The first the symbols forming NT columns in this way:
column represents the symbols to be transmitted by the first  
x1 = s(1) (m) s(2) (m) s(3) (m)
antenna and the second column represents the symbols to be 
x2 = −s(2) (m) s(1) (m) −s(4) (m)
transmitted by the second antenna.  (18)
x3 = −s(3) (m) s(4) (m) s(1) (m) 
In order to received the signal,√the channel gain is
assumed
x4 = −s(4) (m) −s(3) (m) s(2) (m)
as hi,j = √12 N ormal(0, 1) + −1 · N ormal(0, 1) , of the
ith receiving antenna and the j th transmitting antenna, where Thus S[m] = [s(1) (m) s(2) (m) s(3) (m) s(4) (m)] is
the Rayleigh model assumes NLOS. Then, the Channel matrix defined by the symbols matrix, where the signal is modulated
is: by M-QAM. Then we express m = Υn/q 2 , being n the
 2017 IEEE 30th Canadian Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering (CCECE)

number bits to be encoded and q the M-QAM modulation
index. Whit this code is possible to transmit simultaneously, 4
symbols every 8 time slots by 3 antennas with a rate varying
from Υ = 1/2 to Υ = 3/4.
The above input-output MIMO-STBC relation can be also
expressed as:
4. Therefore the system outperform significantly the distortion
when the antennas number in the receiver is increased. The
gain obtained with MIMO 3x4 provides the possibility to
work with greater capacity in the system without a trade-off of
interference and distortion. For this reason is very important to
choose the correct modulation index. We can see that between
8QAM and 16QAM there is no significant gain in terms of
"
(1) (2) (3) ∗(5)
# 2 SNR, however between 16QAM and 64QAM there is about of
 PR (yi h∗i,1 + yi h∗i,2 + yi h∗i,3 + yi hi,1 +
 N 
− x 1
 5dB of gain in terms of SNR. Thus 16QAM could have a better
 i=1 yi∗(6) hi,2 + yi∗(7) hi,3 )
 
 performance in the system with respect to other modulations.
+ξ|x1 |2
" # 2
(1) (2) (4) ∗(5)
 PR (yi h∗i,2 − yi h∗i,1 + yi h∗i,3 + yi hi,2 −
 N  (1200x2400) LDPC MIMO-ALAMOUTI 2X2
− x 100

2
 i=1 yi∗(6) hi,1 + yi∗(8) hi,3 )
  8QAM-LDPC-MIMO

16QAM-LDPC-MIMO

+ξ|x2 |2 10-1
64QAM-LDPC-MIMO
" # 2
(1) (3) (4) ∗(5)
 PR (yi h∗i,3 − yi h∗i,1 − yi h∗i,2 + yi hi,3 −
 N 
− x

3
 i=1 yi∗(7) hi,1 − yi∗(8) hi,2 ) 10-2
 

+ξ|x3 |2

BER
" # 2 10-3
(2) (3) (4) ∗(6)
 PR (−yi h∗i,3 + yi h∗i,2 − yi h∗i,1 − yi hi,3 +
 N 
− x

4
 i=1 yi∗(7) hi,2 − yi∗(8) hi,1 )
 

10-4
+ξ|x4 |2
(19)
10-5

III. S IMULATED R ESULTS

10-6
In Fig. 4 shows the BER performance using the combination 0 5 10 15
Eb/N0(dB)
20 25 30 35

among LDPC codes, STBC MIMO 3x4 and M-QAM modu-

lation modeling over Rayleigh channel. The simulated results
shown that the system improves around 4dB with respect to Fig. 5. M-QAM-LDPC-MIMO 2x2.
systems with uncoded over AWGN channel, when the index
modulation is increased. This is an important contribution The Fig. 6 shows the experimental results over SDR sys-
because the LDPC-MIMO technique reduce the interference tems. When the channel Rayleigh is used, we can see similar
significantly and BER distortion in presence of random chan- results with respect to simulated results showed in Fig. 4.
nels where it becomes necessary the use of coding channel. In this context, to work with real systems like SDR allows
to implemented real systems of high complexity and parallel
processing when the LDPC codes are used.
(1200x2400) LDPC MIMO 3X4
10-1
8QAM/Coded-Rayleigh
16QAM/Coded-Rayleigh
Experimental results with Simulink
64QAM/Coded-Rayleigh 100
8QAM/Uncoded-AWGN
16QAM/Uncoded-AWGN
16QAM/Uncoded-AWGN
64QAM/Uncoded-AWGN
64QAM/Uncoded-AWGN
10-2 16QAM/Coded-Rayleigh-Experimental
64QAM/Coded-Rayleigh-Experimental
10-1
BER

10-3
10-2
BER

10-3
10-4

10-4

-5
10
0 5 10 15 20 25
Eb/N0(dB)
10-5
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
Eb/N0(dB)

Fig. 4. M-QAM-LDPC-MIMO 3x4.

Fig. 6. M-QAM-MIMO 3x4

On another hand, the Fig. 5 shows the simulation with
MIMO 2x2 over Rayleigh channel following the same pa-
rameters of Fig. 4. The simulated results show that the system In order to obtain the capacity over MIMO channels using
worsen about 13dB of SNR for all cases with respect to Fig. the proposed design we can compute the ergodic capacity as
 2017 IEEE 30th Canadian Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering (CCECE)
SNR is varied, the Channel State Information (CSI) is known
at the transmitter side.
We have assumed that MIMO channel is deterministic,
where H is a random matrix being the capacity randomly
time-varying. Our simulation assume that the random channel
is an ergodic process, for this reason we consider the following
equation (20) [2] statistical of the MIMO channel Capacity:
  
PX
C = E{C(H)} = E log2 det IN R + HHT
SN R
(20)
In Fig. 7 shown the capacity that is achieved the systems as:
MIMO 2x2, simulated MIMO 3x4 and experimental MIMO
3x4. These results have a great contribution because the
experimental MIMO 3x4 outperforms the other systems in
terms of capacity. When the SNR is increased at 10dB, the
experimental MIMO 3x4 has a gain of 6 bps/Hz with respect
to MIMO 2x2 and 0,5dB with respect to simulated MIMO 3x4.
The real system over SDR can to achieve a better performance,
however the system could increase the capacity even more if
the number of antennas in the receiver increased also.
16
MIMO 3X4-Simulado
MIMO 2x2-Simulado
14
MIMO 3x4-Experimental
12
Capacity[bps/Hz]
10
8
6
4
2 [9] K. Au, L. Zhang, H. Nikopour, E. Yi, A. Bayesteh, U. Vilaipornsawai,
0 in 2014 IEEE Globecom Workshops, GC Wkshps 2014, 2014, pp. 900–
0 2 4 6 8 10
SNR[dB]
Fig. 7. Channel capacity.
IV. C ONCLUSION .
The scope of our system is to evaluate a SDR system with
STBC and LDPC codes over MIMO channels using Rayleigh
channel (with codification) and AWGN channel (without cod-
ing). The combining among different technologies and the re-
sults obtained give us a great focus towards the implementation
of the last generation networks that are able to improve the
performance of communication system. The results show that
the implementation of the MIMO 3x4 technique and LDPC
codes over Rayleigh channel improves the systems in terms
of distortion and capacity. Our contribution gives a gain of
4dB with respect to uncoded system over AWGN channel,
and 13dB with respect to MIMO 2x2 in terms of SNR. In
addition, there is 6bps/Hz of gain in terms of capacity with
respect to MIMO 2x2 when 16QAM is used, being this last
one the best case of modulation in comparison to the others
(8QAM/64QAM).
Due to the increase of the antennas on the transmitter and
the receiver, the capacity of the system increases, allowing us
to achieve an STBC system with LDPC codes which provides
an efficient transmission, reliable and high speed, compared
to systems uncoded.
In the implementation of the system, it must take in account
the distance between the transmission antenna and receiver
antenna, which must be in function of the wavelength. To
improve the system in terms of speed data processing must be
implemented an FPGA, which allows a parallel processing in
real time.
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