High-rate STBC-MTCM schemes for quasi-static and block-fading channels

Abstract

For the case of a quasi-static fading channel, high rate space-time trellis codes have already been constructed by concatenating Multiple Trellis Coded Modulation (MTCM) and Space-time Block Codes (STBC), called the STBC-MTCM scheme. The focus in all these constructions was to increase the rate of transmission by using more than one orthogonal design while retaining the diversity advantage and little attention was paid to increasing the coding gain advantage. We present a systematic approach by which STTCs can be constructed by the STBC-MTCM scheme, which achieve high rate, full diversity and increased coding gain advantage over the existing codes under certain conditions. Also we a present a systematic approach, to construct STTCs by STBC-MTCM codes which can achieve any given diversity for the case of block-fading channel. The codes constructed for block-fading channels trade-off the rate of transmission and the number of states of the trellis.