The focus of this thesis is to enhance the performance of wireless communication systems through the exploitation of multiple antennas at both the transmitter and the receiver ends of a communication link. Such a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) connection can theoretically provide spatially independent channels which can be exploited to provide diversity gain and thereby mitigate the problem of channel fading. To integrate such MIMO technology with emerging wireless systems such as third generation code division multiple access (CDMA) and fourth generation orthogonal division multiple access (OFDMA) based-approaches novel advanced signal processing techniques are required. The major advantages of MIMO systems, including array, diversity and multiplexing gains, are initially reviewed. Diversity gain is identified as the key property, which leverages the spatial independent channels to increase the robustness of the communication link. The family of space-time block codes is then introduced as a low computational complexity scheme to benefit from diversity gain within wireless systems. In particular, extended-orthogonal and quasi-orthogonal space-time block codes (EO-/QO-STBCs) are introduced for systems with four transmit antennas which can operate either in open or closed-loop forms. New EO-STBC and QO-STBC wideband CDMA transmission schemes are proposed which when operating in closed-loop mode, i.e. channel state information is exploited at the transmitter, is shown to attain full diversity and thereby outperform previous schemes in terms of attain able symbol error rate performance. This advantage is then utilized in MIMO-OFDM transmission schemes and similar frame error rate (FER) performance advantage is attained. Finally, to mitigate multiuser interference within the proposed MIMO-OFDM system a novel two-step combined parallel interference canceller and multiuser detection scheme is proposed. Simulation studies based upon FER confirm the efficacy of the technique.
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