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)     

A Kind of Quasi-Orthogonal Space-Time Block Codes and its Decoding Methods

1IntroductionSpace-Ti me Coding(STC)technology has been stud-ied extensively in recent years as a method to combatdetri mental effects in wireless fading channel and in-crease the transmission capacity in an open-loop way.Therein,a special class of space-…     

Linear Decoupled and Quasi-Decoupled Space–Time Codes

Space-time transmit diversity results in coupling of transmitted symbols across different antennas, which increases the complexity of maximum-likelihood decoding. Symbol coupling can be completely or partially avoided if the space-time code (STC) satisfies specific decoupling conditions; examples of such codes are orthogonal space-time block codes and quasi-orthogonal codes. In this letter, we study decoupling conditions for a linear full-diversity STC. Quasi-decoupled codes are proposed as a partially decoupled full-diversity STC of any rate for any number of transmit antennas with minimum decoding delay. By optimizing the coding gain of quasi-decoupled codes, it is shown that quasi-orthogonal codes have competitive performance with respect to the Alamouti code, and the more-recent threaded algebraic space-time (TAST) codes and ABBA codes. A general full-diversity decoupling condition is considered, and the general solution to this case, which also encompasses previously known orthogonal STCs, is derived     

A Kind of Quasi-Orthogonal Space-Time Block Code and its Decoding Methods

It is well known that it is impossible for complex orthogonal space-time block codes with full diversity and full rate to have more than two transmit antennas while non-orthogonal designs will lose the simplicity of maximum likelihood decoding at receivers. In this paper, we propose a new quasi-orthogonal space-time block code. The code is quasi-orthogonal and can reduce the decoding complexity significantly by employing zero-forced and minimum mean squared error criteria. This paper also presents simulation results of two examples with three and four transmit antennas respectively.     

Space-time codes for high data rate wireless communication:performance criterion and code construction

We consider the design of channel codes for improving the data rate and/or the reliability of communications over fading channels using multiple transmit antennas. Data is encoded by a channel code and the encoded data is split into n streams that are simultaneously transmitted using n transmit antennas. The received signal at each receive antenna is a linear superposition of the n transmitted signals perturbed by noise. We derive performance criteria for designing such codes under the assumption that the fading is slow and frequency nonselective. Performance is shown to be determined by matrices constructed from pairs of distinct code sequences. The minimum rank among these matrices quantifies the diversity gain, while the minimum determinant of these matrices quantifies the coding gain. The results are then extended to fast fading channels. The design criteria are used to design trellis codes for high data rate wireless communication. The encoding/decoding complexity of these codes is comparable to trellis codes employed in practice over Gaussian channels. The codes constructed here provide the best tradeoff between data rate, diversity advantage, and trellis complexity. Simulation results are provided for 4 and 8 PSK signal sets with data rates of 2 and 3 bits/symbol, demonstrating excellent performance that is within 2-3 dB of the outage capacity for these channels using only 64 state encoders     

Differential spatial modulation scheme based on orthogonal space-time block coded

Focusing on the problem that differential spatial modulation (DSM) couldn’t obtain transmit diversity and has high decoding complexity,a new differential spatial modulation scheme based on the orthogonal space-time block code was proposed and the proposed scheme is called OSTBC-DSM.There were two matrices in this scheme:the spatial modulation matrix and the symbol matrix.The former was aimed to activate different transmit antennas by setting the position of nonzero elements,and the latter structured symbolic matrix by using orthogonal space-time block codes (OSTBC) as the basic code block.The proposed scheme could obtain full transmit diversity and higher spectral efficiency compared with the conventional DSM schemes.Moreover,the OSTBC-DSM supported linear maximum likelihood (ML) decoding.The simulation results show that under different spectral efficiencies,the proposed OSTBC-DSM scheme has better bit error rate (BER) performance than other schemes.     

Space-time overlays for convolutionally coded systems

We consider the design of space-time overlays to upgrade single-antenna wireless communication systems to accommodate multiple transmit antennas efficiently. We define the overlay constraint such that the signal transmitted from the first antenna in the upgraded system is the same as that in the single-antenna system. The signals transmitted from the remaining antennas are designed according to space-time coding principles to achieve full spatial diversity in quasi-static flat fading channels. For both binary phase-shift keying (BPSK) and quaternary phase-shift keying modulation systems, we develop an algebraic design framework that exploits the structure of existing single-dimensional convolutional codes in designing overlays that achieve full spatial diversity with minimum additional decoding complexity at the receiver. We also investigate a concatenated coding approach for a BPSK overlay design in which the inner code is an orthogonal block code. This approach is shown to yield near optimal asymptotic performance for quasi-static fading channels. We conclude by offering a brief discussion outlining the extension of the proposed techniques to time-varying block fading channels.     

High-rate codes that are linear in space and time

Multiple-antenna systems that operate at high rates require simple yet effective space-time transmission schemes to handle the large traffic volume in real time. At rates of tens of bits per second per hertz, Vertical Bell Labs Layered Space-Time (V-BLAST), where every antenna transmits its own independent substream of data, has been shown to have good performance and simple encoding and decoding. Yet V-BLAST suffers from its inability to work with fewer receive antennas than transmit antennas-this deficiency is especially important for modern cellular systems, where a base station typically has more antennas than the mobile handsets. Furthermore, because V-BLAST transmits independent data streams on its antennas there is no built-in spatial coding to guard against deep fades from any given transmit antenna. On the other hand, there are many previously proposed space-time codes that have good fading resistance and simple decoding, but these codes generally have poor performance at high data rates or with many antennas. We propose a high-rate coding scheme that can handle any configuration of transmit and receive antennas and that subsumes both V-BLAST and many proposed space-time block codes as special cases. The scheme transmits substreams of data in linear combinations over space and time. The codes are designed to optimize the mutual information between the transmitted and received signals. Because of their linear structure, the codes retain the decoding simplicity of V-BLAST, and because of their information-theoretic optimality, they possess many coding advantages. We give examples of the codes and show that their performance is generally superior to earlier proposed methods over a wide range of rates and signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs)     

空时分组码系统的盲信道估计

空时编码是实现宽带无线数据通信的一种极有潜力的技术,随着发射天线个数的增加,对空时编码进行信道估计时,所需训练符号的个数也将增加,减少了传输数据的有效时间.本文将子空间方法同空时分组码的特性有机地结合,提出了无需训练序列,直接进行信道估计的方法.它充分利用空时分组码的特性,使得接收信号中,表示信道衰落影响的矩阵各向量间存在一定联系,利用这些联系,结合子空间方法,从接收信号中解得信道信息.Monte-Carlo仿真表明,在信噪比较低时,本文算法带来的信道估计误差对于解码性能影响较小.     

On the nonexistence of rate-one generalized complex orthogonal designs

Orthogonal space-time block coding proposed recently by Alamouti (1998) and Tarokh et al. (1999) is a promising scheme for information transmission over Rayleigh-fading channels using multiple transmit antennas due to its favorable characteristics of having full transmit diversity and a decoupled maximum-likelihood (ML) decoding algorithm. Tarokh et al. extended the theory of classical orthogonal designs to the theory of generalized, real, or complex, linear processing orthogonal designs and then applied the theory of generalized orthogonal designs to construct space-time block codes (STBC) with the maximum possible diversity order while having a simple decoding algorithm for any given number of transmit and receive antennas. It has been known that the STBC constructed in this way can achieve the maximum possible rate of one for every number of transmit antennas using any arbitrary real constellation and for two transmit antennas using any arbitrary complex constellation. Contrary to this, in this correspondence we prove that there does not exist rate-one STBC from generalized complex linear processing orthogonal designs for more than two transmit antennas using any arbitrary complex constellation.     

频率选择性衰落信道下一种空时分组码的直接解码

该文针对 3个发射天线,1个接收天线的空时分组码系统,提出了频率选择性衰落信道下,无需信道估计,直接对空时分组码进行解码的方法,把子空间方法应用于空时编码当中,从信号处理和空时编码两个方面考虑空时分组码的直接解码问题,利用空时分组码所特有的正交设计,较为方便地从子空间中解出信号信息,从单载波的角度,解决了频率选择性衰落下空时分组码的解码问题。Monte-Carlo仿真给出了直接解码算法的性能,并与使用准确信道信息的解码算法做了性能比较。     

Diagonal algebraic space-time block codes

We construct a new family of linear space-time (ST) block codes by the combination of rotated constellations and the Hadamard transform, and we prove them to achieve the full transmit diversity over a quasi-static or fast fading channels. The proposed codes transmit at a normalized rate of 1 symbol/s. When the number of transmit antennas n=1, 2, or n is a multiple of four, we spread a rotated version of the information symbol vector by the Hadamard transform and send it over n transmit antennas and n time periods; for other values of n, we construct the codes by sending the components of a rotated version of the information symbol vector over the diagonal of an n × n ST code matrix. The codes maintain their rate, diversity, and coding gains for all real and complex constellations carved from the complex integers ring Z [i], and they outperform the codes from orthogonal design when using complex constellations for n > 2. The maximum-likelihood (ML) decoding of the proposed codes can be implemented by the sphere decoder at a moderate complexity. It is shown that using the proposed codes in a multiantenna system yields good performances with high spectral efficiency and moderate decoding complexity     

Extending orthogonal block codes with partial feedback

During the last few years a number of space-time block codes have been proposed for use in multiple transmit antennas systems. We propose a method to extend any space-time code constructed for m transmit antennas to m p transmit antennas through group-coherent codes (GCCs). GCCs make use of very limited feedback from the receiver (as low as 1 bit). In particular the scheme can be used to extend any orthogonal code (e.g., Alamouti code) to more than two antennas while preserving low decoding complexity, full diversity benefits, and full data rate.     

Variable-rate space-time block codes in M-ary PSK systems

We consider a multiple antenna system when combined array processing with space-time coding is used. We present variable rate space-time block codes for two, three, and four transmit antennas and optimize the transmit power so that the average bit-error rate (BER) is minimized. Numerical results show that this optimum power allocation scheme provides significant gain over the equal power allocation scheme. We then classify all the variable rate space-time block codes having the same code rates and identify the unique code that achieves the lowest BER. We explicitly compute the performance of the variable rate codes over a Rayleigh-fading channel. The proposed variable rate space-time block codes are useful for unequal error protection in multiple transmit antenna systems.     

Optimal space-time coding under iterative processing

In this paper, we deal with the design of a full-rate space-time block coding (STBC) scheme optimized for linear iterative decoding over fast fading multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channel. A general and simple coding scheme called diagonal threaded space-time (DTST) code is presented for an arbitrary number of transmit and receive antennas. Theoretical analysis shows that DTST code associated with linear iterative decoding tends towards full diversity performance while providing maximum MIMO multiplexing gain. Simulation results confirm the ability of DTST to outperform the state-of-the-art STBC and conventional spatial data multiplexing schemes under iterative processing.     

Interference robustness aspects of space-time block code-based transmit diversity

Transmit diversity, which was initially developed for noise-limited environments, has been promoted as a viable candidate for improving the link quality in both existing and future systems for wireless communication. However, to ensure efficient spectrum utilization, receivers operating within wireless multiuser networks must be robust not only to fading and noise but to interference from other system users as well. This work considers interference robustness aspects when transmit diversity, in the form of space-time block coding, is used in multiuser systems. Properties of the space-time block encoded signals such as code rate, block structure, diversity order, etc., and their implications on detection and interference rejection by means of noise whitening are discussed. To handle the presence of space-time block encoded interference, a space-time processing-based extension of an interference rejection combining algorithm is proposed. Results are presented indicating that transmit diversity based on space-time block codes (STBCs) of the linear dispersion type improve robustness against interference in terms of an increased diversity advantage. This can be achieved either by increasing the number of transmit antennas or by reducing the rate of the code. It is also shown, by analysis and by simulation examples, that the performance improvements obtained by using transmit diversity in multiuser systems may rapidly subside as the signal-to-interference ratio decreases. However, by using the proposed interference rejection scheme tailored to the space-time encoded structure, performance improvements of transmit diversity are also obtained in a multiuser environment.     

Detectors and asymptotic analysis for bandwidth-efficient space-time multiple-access systems

In this paper, a narrowband multiple-channel transmission scheme with multiple transmit antennas is proposed and analyzed. The channelization is based on space-time signature matrices, which do not expand bandwidth, unlike conventional schemes such as code-division or time-division multiplexing. The channels can be used by multiple independent users in an uplink or downlink scenario (multiple access or broadcast channels, respectively), or by one user in a multiplexing scenario. The data transmitted on each channel is convolutionally encoded, interleaved, and then space-time block encoded before space-time channelization. Each channel has a unique interleaver and space-time signature, but the convolutional encoder and space-time block code encoder can be identical across channels. It is shown that asymptotic single-user-like performance can be achieved with optimal detection and decoding in a Rayleigh fading channel. Practical receiver algorithms are developed based on the iterative (turbo) detection technique. The simulation results demonstrate that these suboptimal receivers achieve single-user performance at moderate signal-to-noise ratios, and moderate user loads. In the single-user multiplexing case, a significant performance gain over single-channel transmission with the same data rate is obtained.     

Efficiently decoded full-rate space-time block codes

Space-time block codes with orthogonal structures typically provide full-diversity reception and simple receiver processing. However, rate-1 orthogonal codes for complex constellations have not been found for more than two transmit antennas. By using a genetic algorithm, rate-1 space-time block codes that accommodate very simple receiver processing at the cost of reduced diversity are designed in this paper for more than two transmit antennas. Simulation results show that evolved codes combined with efficient outer codes provide better performance over fading channels than minimum-decoding-complexity quasiorthogonal codes at typical operating signal-to-noise ratios. When the fading is more severe than Rayleigh fading, the spectral efficiency is specified, and an efficient outer code is used, evolved codes outperform orthogonal space-time block codes.     

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.     

Design of recursive convolutional space-time codes with an arbitrary number of transmit antennas

A new class of recursive convolutional space-time codes (ReC-STC) with an arbitrary number of transmit antennas is designed by adopting several parallel two-state recursive systematic convolutional codes (RSCs). An intercross linear mapping rule that distributes the output bits of a RSC to the different positions of different transmitted signals is also described. The proposed ReC-STC can not only increase the data rate with the number of transmit antennas, but also perform well when it is used in a serially concatenated space-time code (SCSTC).