A Comparative Study of Alamouti and Golden Space-Time Block Codes

In this conference paper, we study the BER and FER performance of the best-known space-time block codes: the Alamouti scheme and the Golden code. By way of computer simulations using a channel simulator based on the geometrical one-ring scattering model, we show that, for equal quantity of information transmitted per channel use, the performance of the Alamouti code is clearly superior to that of the Golden code for a distance between collocated antennas that is equal to and smaller than the wavelength of the carrier. The performances become comparable for an antenna separation equal to and larger than the double of the carrier wavelength. This important result was not known from the open literature.