A general scheme for equalization of space-time block-coded systems with unknown CSI

Recently, space-time block codes (STBCs) have gained much attention as an effective transmit diversity technique to increase the capacity of wireless communication systems. In this paper, we consider a general technique for direct equalization of space-time block-coding systems with unknown channel state information (CSI). This technique is suitable for several existing hybrid STBC schemes, such as STBC/orthogonal-frequency-division multiplexing (STBC-OFDM) and STBC/code-division multiple access (STBC-CDMA). We show that by exploiting the redundancy in the structure of STBC, a zero-forcing equalizer can be constructed without channel estimation. The conditions for the identifiability of the zero-forcing equalizer are also derived to ensure correct equalization. To further improve the performance of the proposed method, a new iterative algorithm is developed by incorporating the finite alphabet property of information symbols. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithms can outperform comparative schemes in most simulation conditions.