Space-time trellis code design with simple decoding for MIMO communication systems

Space-tune coding is a promising transmit diversity technique for future wireless systems equipped with multiple antennas. Two practical space-time coding design issues are the coding performance and the decoding complexity. In this thesis, space-time trellis code design with simple decoding is discussed. The essential idea is to concatenate an outer multiple trellis coded modulation (MTCM) encoder with an inner orthogonal (or orthogonal-like) space-time block code (OSTBC). The outer MTCM is designed to achieve a high coding gain while the inner block code is used to devise a simple decoding.; First, space-tune coded CPM system design is studied. Due to the inner memory of CPM modulators, this design problem can be seen as a special case of space-tune trellis code design. An orthogonal space-time coded partial response continuous phase modulation (CPM) system (OST-PCPM) with two transmit antennas is proposed. Based on the orthogonality of transmit signals and the proposed differential encoding scheme, a fast decoding algorithm is developed for some special cases. A suboptimal decoding method is developed to provide a tradeoff between complexity and performance.; Then, a differential space-time trellis-coded scheme is presented. Based on the per-survival processing technique (PSP), a low-complexity suboptimal differential decoder is developed. In slow fading channels, it can approach the performance of SOSTTC with coherent decoding. Furthermore, in time-varying channels, a bank of recursive least square (RLS) type channel predictors are incorporated into the Viterbi decoder to track the channel variance.; In order to achieve power efficiency, a super-orthogonal space-time trellis coding (SOSTTC) scheme with quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) constellations is devised. A systematic set-partitioning method for QAM constellations is given. Furthermore, trellis shaping based on set partitioning is incorporated in SOSTTC with QAM symbols to achieve extra shaping gain. Peak constraints can be used to limit the constellation expansion ratio and peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR).; At last, the optimal rotations for quasi-orthogonal space-tune block codes (QOSTBC) with M-ary phase shift key (MPSK) modulation are given. A new family of space-tune trellis codes for four and more than four transmit antenna systems are devised, which are based on our new designed QOSTBC with minimum decoding complexity (QOSTBC-MDC). The proposed set-partitioning method can be used for systems with more than four transmit antennas directly. Furthermore, its decoding complexity is low, thanks to the new designed inner block codes. Several design examples are presented.