Super-orthogonal space-time trellis codes with eight dimensional phase-shift keying signal constellations

We propose a new method of designing super-orthogonal space-time trellis codes (SOSTTCS) by labeling each state transition of the trellis diagram with an ordered pair of 2×2 orthogonal matrices instead of only a single 2×2 orthogonal matrix. An 8D instead of a 4D signal constellation is thus used for modulation and the delay elements of the trellis encoder are 4T instead of 2T, where T is the 2D symbol duration. Therefore, at the receiver, the sequence decoding using Viterbi algorithm requires two times less frequent updating of the branch metrics. We investigate by computer simulation the performance of the new sosttcs compared to sosttcs designed by the known method. The frame error rate (fer) and the bit error rate (ber) simulation results show that the performance of the new sosttcs is practically as good as that of the sosttcs of similar complexity designed along classical lines, with the advantage that the number of arithmetic and logic operations performed by the decoder per time unit is smaller, which is crucial in high data-rate applications.