A new union bound based on holder inequality for space-time codes

An exact Pair-wise Error Probability (PEP) and the corresponding exact union bound expressions have been derived for evaluating the bit-error rate (BER) performance of Space-Time (S-T) codes, but it is shown in this paper that the computation precision of the computer program used to evaluate these expressions may produce negative results. Here a new PEP based on the Hölder inequality and the corresponding new union bound (NUB) are derived and proposed for evaluation of the BER of S-T codes in the flat Rayleigh fading channels. Analytical and numerical results show that the NUB does not have the problem of producing negative result, is tighter than other practical union bounds reported, has nearly identical accuracy as the exact union bound, and requires much less computational time for BER evaluation Copyright © 2009 ACM.