Reduced-Complexity Receiver Structures for Space–Time Bit-Interleaved Coded Modulation Systems

Transmission efficiency in radio channels can be considerably improved by using multiple transmit and receive antennas and employing a family of schemes called space-time (ST) coding. Both extended range and/or improved bandwidth efficiency can be achieved, compared with a radio link with a single transmit and receive antenna. Bit-interleaved coded modulation schemes give diversity gains on fading channels with higher order modulation constellations combined with conventional binary convolutional codes also for the case of a single transmit and receive antenna radio link. In this paper, we study a family of flexible bandwidth-efficient ST coding schemes which combine these two ideas in a narrowband flat-fading channel and single-carrier modems. We address receiver complexity for the case of a large number of transmit antennas and higher order modulation constellations. Especially, we focus on practical configurations, where the number of transmit antennas is greater than that of receive antennas. Simplified receivers using tentative decisions are proposed and evaluated by means of simulations. Tradeoffs between complexity reduction and performance loss are presented. We emphasize systems that are of particular interest in applications where the number of transmit antennas exceeds the number of receive antennas. A system with four transmit antennas with an eight-fold complexity reduction and a performance loss of about 1 dB is demonstrated     

Multiuser Interference Cancellation and Detection for Users with More Than Two Transmit Antennas

We consider J transmitter units each equipped with N transmit antennas over wireless Rayleigh fading channels. Previously in [1], it was proved that when each transmitter unit has TV transmit antennas, using (J - 1)N + r receive antennas for any r ges 1, the receiver can completely separate the signals of J users. The provided diversity to each user was shown to be Nr if the units employ space-time trellis codes even if the units transmit asynchronously. Here, we consider the case when all units are synchronized and employ quasi-orthogonal space-time block codes (N > 2). It is proved that in this case a receiver with J + r - 1 antennas with r ges 1 can separate the transmitted signals of all units and provide each unit with a diversity order of Nr. Based on our interference cancellation technique, we then offer an array processing scheme which provides trade-off between diversity and spatial multiplexing. It is shown via simulations that this array processing scheme performs better than well-known modulation schemes, e.g. space-time block codes and BLAST, for a moderate number of receive antennas.     

A differential detection scheme for transmit diversity

We present a transmission scheme for exploiting diversity given by two transmit antennas when neither the transmitter nor the receiver has access to channel state information. The new detection scheme can use equal energy constellations and encoding is simple. At the receiver, decoding is achieved with low decoding complexity. The transmission provides full spatial diversity and requires no channel state side information at the receiver. The scheme can be considered as the extension of differential detection schemes to two transmit antennas     

Joint channel estimation and data detection in space-time communications

The paper considers joint channel estimation and data sequence detection for multipath radio channels with multiple antennas at the transmitter and/or receiver. An iterative space-time receiver based on the expectation-maximization algorithm is proposed. We examine the performance of this receiver for transmit diversity and space-time coding methods over Rayleigh fading channels. Simulation results show that the receiver can often achieve near-coherent performance with modest complexity and using very few pilot symbols.     

Joint equalization and interference suppression for high data ratewireless systems

Enhanced Data Rates for Global Evolution (EDGE) is currently being standardized as an evolution of GSM in Europe and of IS-136 in the United States as an air interface for high speed data services for third generation mobile systems. In this paper, we study space-time processing for EDGE to provide interference suppression. We consider the use of two receive antennas and propose a joint equalization and diversity receiver. This receiver uses feedforward filters on each diversity branch to perform minimum mean-square error cochannel interference suppression, while leaving the intersymbol interference to be mitigated by the subsequent equalizer. The equalizer is a delayed decision feedback sequence estimator, consisting of a reduced-state Viterbi processor and a feedback filter. The equalizer provides soft output to the channel decoder after deinterleaving. We describe a novel weight generation algorithm and present simulation results on the link performance of EDGE with interference suppression. These results show a significant improvement in the signal-to-interference ratio (SIR) performance due to both diversity (against fading) and interference suppression. At a 10% block error rate, the proposed receiver provides a 20 dB improvement in SIR for both the typical urban and hilly terrain profiles     

Equalization concepts for Alamouti's space-time block code

In this paper, we develop receiver concepts for transmission with space-time block codes (STBCs) over frequency-selective fading channels. The focus lies on Alamouti's space-time block-coding scheme, but the results may be generalized to other STBCs as well. We show that a straightforward combination of conventional equalizers and a space-time block decoder is only possible if at least as many receive antennas as transmit antennas are employed, but not for the practically interesting case of pure transmit diversity, for which space-time coding had been originally developed. This restriction is circumvented by our approach. Here, the structural properties of the transmit signal of space-time block coding, which is shown to be improper (rotationally variant), are fully used. For this, equalizers with widely linear (WL) processing are designed, such as a WL equalizer, a decision-feedback equalizer with WL feedforward and feedback filtering, and a delayed decision-feedback sequence estimator with WL prefiltering. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed concepts may be successfully employed in an enhanced data rates for GSM evolution (EDGE) receiver, especially for pure transmit diversity. Here, significant gains can be observed, compared with a conventional single-input single-output transmission.     

Space-time codes for high data rate wireless communication:performance criteria in the presence of channel estimation errors,mobility, and multiple paths

Space-time coding is a bandwidth and power efficient method of communication over fading channels that realizes the benefits of multiple transmit antennas. Specific codes have been constructed using design criteria derived for quasi-static flat Rayleigh or Rician fading, where channel state information is available at the receiver. It is evident that the practicality of space-time codes will be greatly enhanced if the derived design criteria remain valid in the absence of perfect channel state information. It is even more desirable that the design criteria not be unduly sensitive to frequency selectivity and to the Doppler spread. This paper presents a theoretical study of these issues beginning with the effect of channel estimation error. Here it is assumed that a channel estimator extracts fade coefficients at the receiver and for constellations with constant energy, it is proved that in the absence of ideal channel state information the design criteria for space-time codes is still valid. The analysis also demonstrates that standard channel estimation techniques can be used in conjunction with space-time codes provided that the number of transmit antennas is small. We also derive the maximum-likelihood detection metric in the presence of channel estimation errors. Next, the effect of multiple paths on the performance of space-time codes is studied for a slowly changing Rayleigh channel. It is proved that the presence of multiple paths does not decrease the diversity order guaranteed by the design criteria used to construct the space-time codes. Similar results hold for rapid fading channels with or without multiple paths. The conclusion is that the diversity order promised by space-time coding is achieved under a variety of mobility conditions and environmental effects     

Double differential space-time block coding for time-selectivefading channels

Most existing space-time coding schemes assume time-invariant fading channels and offer antenna diversity gains relying on accurate channel estimates at the receiver. Other single differential space-time block coding schemes forego channel estimation but are less effective in rapidly fading environments. Based on a diagonal unitary matrix group, a novel double differential space-time block coding approach is derived in this paper for time-selective fading channels. Without estimating the channels at the receiver, information symbols are recovered with antenna diversity gains regardless of frequency offsets. The resulting transceiver has very low complexity and is applicable to an arbitrary number of transmit and receive antennas. Approximately optimal space-time codes are also designed to minimize bit error rate. System performance is evaluated both analytically and with simulations     

High Rate CPFSK Space-Time Trellis Codes

Space-time trellis coding is an established diversity technique that reduces the effects of multipath fading over wireless communication channels. Here, we consider high rate space-time trellis codes (STTC) with continuous phase frequency shift keying (CPFSK). We present optimized rate-2/3 STTC implemented with 3 transmit antennas. These codes provide system throughputs of 4 and 6 bits per channel use with 4-ary and 8-ary CPFSK respectively. Simulated error rate performance of the optimized codes with receive diversity is presented. We show that although the schemes do not achieve full transmit diversity, they provide excellent coding gains compared to full rank schemes that have equivalent throughput, but higher order modulations and greater complexity.     

Adaptive transmit antenna selection with pragmatic space-time trellis codes

We consider the problem of selecting a subset of transmit antennas in MIMO systems to minimize error probability when only partial channel information is available at the transmitter. An upper bound for error probability of space-time coded transmit antenna selection scheme conditioned on the channel state information is presented. Based on the performance analysis, a criterion of selecting a subset of available transmit antennas to minimize the upper bound on the PEP is proposed. In contrast to other transmit antenna selection schemes for uncoded transmission or with a fixed number of antennas within the selection subset in the literature, the proposed scheme can adaptively select both a variable number of transmit antennas and their corresponding space-time codes for transmission. Furthermore, we present pragmatic space-time trellis coding schemes for slow Rayleigh fading channels. The principal advantage of the schemes is that a single encoder and decoder can be used for systems with a variable number of transmit antennas. The performance of the pragmatic space-time codes with adaptive antenna selection and the effect of the imperfect channel estimation on performance are evaluated by simulations. It is shown that the adaptive selection offers considerable antenna selection gain relative to the antenna selection system with a fixed number of antennas within the selection subset     

Differential space-time modulation

Space-time coding and modulation exploit the presence of multiple transmit antennas to improve the performance on multipath radio channels. Thus far, most work on space-time coding has assumed that perfect channel estimates are available at the receiver. In certain situations, however, it may be difficult or costly to estimate the channel accurately, in which case it is natural to consider the design of modulation techniques that do not require channel estimates at the transmitter or receiver. We propose a general approach to differential modulation for multiple transmit antennas based on group codes. This approach ran be applied to any number of transmit and receive antennas, and any signal constellation. We also derive low-complexity differential receivers, error bounds, and modulator design criteria, which we use to construct optimal differential modulation schemes for two transmit antennas. These schemes can be demodulated with or without channel estimates. This permits the receiver to exploit channel estimates when they are available. The performance degrades by approximately 3 dB when estimates are not available     

多天线的发送分集系统中多用户分集的研究

研究了如何通过选择发送天线和天线组合来提高整个多用户多天线系统的性能。本文分别讨论了STOBC、选择式发送分集、相位加权等各种发送信号结构下系统的调度性能。和其它发送信号结构相比,STOBC对于调度性能有着很大危害。信道反馈信息越多,调度性能就越好。不同的发送天线选择和组合策略得到不同的性能。本文讨论了三种选择策略:max-max, max-sum和max-min。max-max的调度性能优于其它两种策略。因此,发送信号的结构和选择策略都严重影响着多用户分集。     

Timing estimation in multiple-antenna systems over Rayleigh flat-fading channels

The use of multiple transmit and receive antennas can offer substantial performance improvement to a wireless communication system by providing spatial diversity and supporting high data rate services. Many of the current space-time coding schemes proposed for multiple-antenna systems assume perfect timing information to achieve the expected performance gain. The lack of timing synchronization between the transmit and receive signals could degrade the system performance. In this paper, we investigate the problem of timing estimation in multiple-antenna systems with the aid of training signals. A slow, independent and identically distributed Rayleigh flat-fading channel model is considered. We derive two maximum likehood timing estimators based on two different approaches, namely, treating the channel deterministic and random and present the corresponding Crame/spl acute/r-Rao bounds (CRBs). Then, the optimal designs of training signals based on some figures of merit associated with the CRBs are discussed.     

Combined array processing and space-time coding

The information capacity of wireless communication systems may be increased dramatically by employing multiple transmit and receive antennas. The goal of system design is to exploit this capacity in a practical way. An effective approach to increasing data rate over wireless channels is to employ space-time coding techniques appropriate to multiple transmit antennas. These space-time codes introduce temporal and spatial correlation into signals transmitted from different antennas, so as to provide diversity at the receiver, and coding gain over an uncoded system. For large number of transmit antennas and at high bandwidth efficiencies, the receiver may become too complex whenever correlation across transmit antennas is introduced. This paper dramatically reduces encoding and decoding complexity by partitioning antennas at the transmitter into small groups, and using individual space-time codes, called the component codes, to transmit information from each group of antennas. At the receiver, an individual space-time code is decoded by a novel linear processing technique that suppresses signals transmitted by other groups of antennas by treating them as interference. A simple receiver structure is derived that provides diversity and coding gain over uncoded systems. This combination of array processing at the receiver and coding techniques for multiple transmit antennas can provide reliable and very high data rate communication over narrowband wireless channels. A refinement of this basic structure gives rise to a multilayered space-time architecture that both generalizes and improves upon the layered space-time architecture proposed by Foschini (see Bell Labs Tech. J., vol.1, no.2, 1996)     

Analysis of multiple-antenna wireless links at low SNR

Wireless channels with multiple transmit/receive antennas are known to provide a high spectral efficiency both when the channel is known to the receiver, and when the channel is not known to the receiver if the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is high. Here we analyze such systems at low SNR, which may find application in sensor networks and other low-power devices. The key point is that, since channel estimates are not reliable, it is often not reasonable to assume that the channel is known at the receiver at low SNR. In this unknown channel case, we show that for sensible input distributions, in particular all practical modulation schemes, the capacity is asymptotically quadratic in the SNR, /spl rho/, and thus much less than the known channel case where it exhibits a linear growth in /spl rho/. We show that under various signaling constraints, e.g., Gaussian modulation, unitary space-time modulation, and peak constraints, that mutual information is maximized by using a single transmit antenna. We also show that at low SNR, sending training symbols leads to a rate reduction in proportion to the fraction of training duration time so that it is best not to perform training. Furthermore, we show that the per-channel use mutual information is linear in both the number of receive antennas and the channel coherence interval.     

Analysis of Transmit Antenna Selection/Maximal-Ratio Combining in Rayleigh Fading Channels

In this paper, we investigate a multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) scheme combining transmit antenna selection and receiver maximal-ratio combining (the TAS/MRC scheme). In this scheme, a single transmit antenna, which maximizes the total received signal power at the receiver, is selected for uncoded transmission. The closed-form outage probability of the system with transmit antenna selection is presented. The bit error rate (BER) of the TAS/MRC scheme is derived for binary phase-shift keying (BPSK) in flat Rayleigh fading channels. The BER analysis demonstrates that the TAS/MRC scheme can achieve a full diversity order at high signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs), as if all the transmit antennas were used. The average SNR gain of the TAS/MRC is quantified and compared with those of uncoded receiver MRC and space-time block codes (STBCs). The analytical results are verified by simulation. It is shown that the TAS/MRC scheme outperforms some more complex space-time codes of the same spectral efficiency. The cost of the improved performance is a low-rate feedback channel. We also show that channel estimation errors based on pilot symbols have no impact on the diversity order over quasi-static fading channels.     

Performance analysis and design of STBCs for frequency-selective fading channels

In this paper, space-time block-coded transmission over frequency-selective fading channels is investigated. A lower bound for the pairwise error probability for optimum detection is given. Also, an approximation for the bit-error rate is derived and compared with simulation results for maximum-likelihood sequence estimation (MLSE) for the GSM/EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution) system. Furthermore, a novel design rule for space-time block codes (STBCs) for frequency-selective fading channels is provided. A corresponding code is designed and shown to yield higher performance than Alamouti's code. It is demonstrated that for fading channels with L independent impulse response coefficients, STBCs designed for the flat fading channel can achieve at most a diversity order of (N/sub T/+L-1)N/sub R/ if N/sub T/ transmit antennas and N/sub R/ receive antennas are used. On the other hand, the maximum diversity order employing the proposed code design rule is LN/sub T/N/sub R/.     

Joint prefiltering and MLSE equalization of space-time-codedtransmissions over frequency-selective channels

The problem of designing a front-end prefilter to improve the performance and/or reduce the complexity of maximum likelihood sequence estimation equalization of space-time-coded signals is addressed in this paper. The front-end prefilter performs channel shortening without excessive noise enhancement and is constrained to be a finite impulse response filter for practical implementation. Transmission scenarios emphasized assume two transmit antennas (with delay diversity or space-time trellis coding) and either one or two receive antennas. Extensions to more antennas are straightforward. Various design parameters (such as number of prefilter taps, number of equalizer states, and decision delay) are optimized using Monte Carlo simulations in a typical urban EDGE environment     

Exact bit-error rate analysis for the combined system of beamforming and Alamouti's space-time block code

The simplest Alamouti's space-time block code can be coupled with more than two transmit antennas via the beamforming technique to enhance the performance gain without code rate reduction. Beamforming is performed at the transmitter, dependent on the channel state information (CSI) which is obtained by using feedback through a feedback link or estimated using reciprocity in duplexing schemes. In this letter, we derived the exact bit-error rate for the combined system with two transmit and one receive antennas in slow Rayleigh flat fading channels. It is assumed that the receiver has the perfect CSI. The expression can be easily extended to more than two transmit antennas.     

Antenna selection for multiple-antenna transmission systems: performance analysis and code construction

This correspondence studies antenna selection for wireless communications systems that employ multiple transmit and receive antennas. We assume that (1) the channel is characterized by quasi-static Rayleigh flat fading, and the subchannels fade independently, (2) the channel state information (CSI) is exactly known at the receiver, (3) the selection is available only at the receiver, and it is based on the instantaneous signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) at each receive antenna, and (4) space-time codes are used at the transmitter. We analyze the performance of such systems by deriving explicit upper bounds on the pairwise error probability (PEP). This performance analysis shows that (1) by selecting the set of antennas that observe the largest instantaneous SNR, one can achieve the same diversity gain as the one obtained by using all the receive antennas, provided that the underlying space-time code has full spatial diversity, and (2) in the case of rank-deficient space-time codes, the diversity gain may be dramatically reduced when antenna selection is used. However, we emphasize that in both cases the coding gain is reduced with antenna selection compared to the full complexity system. Based on the upper bounds derived, we describe code design principles suitable for antenna selection. Specifically, for systems with two transmit antennas, we design space-time codes that perform better than the known ones when antenna selection is employed. Finally, we present numerical examples and simulation results that validate our analysis and code design principles.