SDR Design and Implementation of Differential STBC Transmission

Abstract

Multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) technology uses multiple antennas and advanced signal processing to increase the communication system capacity, reliability and data rate without sacrificing energy consumption or RF bandwidth. In some scenarios, the MIMO communication system need to be designed without knowledge of the channel state information. One possible solution is differential space–time block coding (DSTBC). Ettus USRPs (Universal Software Radio Peripherals) are used in this research work to prototype a DSTBC-based 2 × 1 MISO (multiple-input-single-output) communication system. The signal processing is performed by software with MATLAB. This software defined radio (SDR) approach allows a reconfigurable implementation of the Differential STBC algorithm with tuneable parameters.