Performance of MIMO-OFDMA systems in correlated fading channels and non-stationary interference

Multiple input multiple output (MIMO) antenna systems with orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) is the most promising combination of technologies for high data-rate services in next generation wireless networks. Performance assessment of multi-cell systems based on these technologies is of crucial importance in the deployment of broadband wireless standards such as WiMAX and 3GPP LTE. In this paper, we define an analytical framework for the assessment of the average error probability of multi-cell bit-interleaved convolutionally-coded MIMO-OFDMA systems. Both coordinated and randomized multi-user access strategies are considered for interference mitigation. In such a scenario, the analytical framework must account for the correlation of the fading channel over the space-frequency domain and possible non-stationary features of the multicell interference (due to subcarrier randomization). The analysis is carried out for different multi-antenna strategies, ranging from beamforming systems for mitigation of out-of-cell directional interference to spatial diversity schemes based on orthogonal space-time coding. Numerical results corroborate the proposed analytical framework for heterogeneous environments and a wide range of system configurations.