| Summary: | The combination of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) and multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) techniques has been widely considered as the most promising approach for building future wireless transmission systems. The use of multiple antennas poses then big restrictions on the size and cost of individual radio transmitters and receivers, to keep the overall transceiver implementation feasible. This results in various imperfections in the analog radio front ends. One good example is the so-called I/Q imbalance problem related to the amplitude and phase matching of the transceiver I and Q chains. This paper studies the performance of space-time coded (STC) multiantenna OFDM systems under I/Q imbalance, covering both the transmitter and the receiver sides of the link. The challenging case of frequency-selective I/Q imbalances is assumed, being an essential ingredient in future wideband wireless systems. As a practical example, the Alamouti space-time coded OFDM system with two transmit and M receive antennas is examined in detail and a closed-form solution for the resulting signal-to-interference ratio (SIR) at the detector input due to I/Q imbalance is derived. This offers a valuable analytical tool for assessing the I/Q imbalance effects in any STC-OFDM system, without lengthy data or system simulations. In addition, the impact of I/Q imbalances on the channel estimation in the STC-OFDM context is also analyzed analytically. Furthermore, based on the derived signal models, a practical pilot-based I/Q imbalance compensation scheme is also proposed, being able to jointly mitigate the effects of frequency-selective I/Q imbalances as well as channel estimation errors. The performance of the compensator is analyzed using extensive computer simulations, and it is shown to virtually reach the perfectly matched reference system performance with low pilot overhead.
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