Joint Source and Space Time Decoding over Fading Channels

For high data rate communications, variable length codes (VLC) and multiple input multiple output (MIMO) techniques are required in the application layer and the physical layer, respectively. In this paper, we study the joint decoding for systems that consist of reversible VLC (RVLC) as the source codes and recursive space time trellis codes (STTC) as the coded modulation. The maximum a posteriori probability (MAP) decoding algorithm is modified to accommodate issues including the inseparable systematic information, the unsymmetric trellis structure, and information in both bit and symbol domains. Further, by converting extrinsic information based on the modulation mode and the mapping method, iterative information exchange can be performed so as to fully utilize the redundancy in both RVLC and recursive STTC. The performance of the proposed joint decoding is evaluated over both rapid fading and quasi- static flat fading channels, which shows significant improvement in coding gain in comparison with the non-iterative receiver.