Wireless systems are rapidly developing to provide high speed voice, text and multimedia messaging services which were traditionally offered by wire line networks. To support these services, channels with large capacities are required. Information theoretic investigations have shown that Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) channels can achieve very high capacities. Space-Time Block Coding (STBC) and Bell Labs Layered Space-Time Architecture (BLAST) are two potential schemes which utilize the diversity offered by MIMO channels to provide reliable high date rate wireless communication. This work studies the sensitivity of these two schemes to spatial correlation in MIMO channels.

The first part of the thesis studies the effect of spatial correlation on the performance of STBC by using Geometrically Based Single Bounce MIMO (GBSB-MIMO) channel models. Performance is analyzed for two scenarios: one without scatterers in the vicinity of the transmitter and other with scatterers. In the second part of the thesis, the sensitivity of BLAST to spatial correlation is analyzed. Later, schemes which use the principles of Multilayered Space-Time Coded Modulation to combine the benefits of BLAST and STBC are introduced and their performance is investigated in correlated and uncorrelated Rayleigh fading. Results indicate that schemes using orthogonal design space-time block codes are reasonably robust to spatial correlation while schemes like BLAST are very sensitive as they depend on array processing to separate signals from various transmit antennas.