Performance Comparison of Bit Error Rate for STBC and STTC Systems

This article investigates the Bit Error Rate (BER) comparison between Space-Time Block Coding (STBC) and Space-Time Trellis Coding (STTC) systems. STBC is widely adopted in wireless communications, particularly in MIMO systems, for its simpler implementation using orthogonal designs that enable straightforward decoding with linear processing at the receiver. In contrast, STTC represents a more sophisticated coding technique involving complex encoding and decoding processes between multiple transmit and receive antennas, typically implemented using trellis-based algorithms that require Viterbi decoders for optimal performance. While STTC systems theoretically offer superior performance through joint coding and spatial diversity gain, their implementation demands higher computational complexity and memory resources. Our study compares the performance of both techniques under various channel conditions, examining their trade-offs between BER performance and computational efficiency to provide practical insights for system designers. Key implementation aspects include STBC's matrix-based encoding simplicity versus STTC's state-machine driven trellis structure, which directly impacts real-time processing requirements and hardware resource allocation in practical deployments.