A New Family of Low-Complexity Decodable STBCs for Four Transmit Antennas

In this paper we propose a new construction method for rate-1 Fast-Group-Decodable (FGD) Space-Time-Block Codes (STBC)s for 2^a transmit antennas. We focus on the case of a=2 and we show that the new FGD rate-1 code has the lowest worst-case decoding complexity among existing comparable STBCs. The coding gain of the new rate-1 code is then optimized through constellation stretching and proved to be constant irrespective of the underlying QAM constellation prior to normalization. In a second step, we propose a new rate-2 STBC that multiplexes two of our rate-1 codes by the means of a unitary matrix. A compromise between rate and complexity is then obtained through puncturing our rate-2 code giving rise to a new rate-3/2 code. The proposed codes are compared to existing codes in the literature and simulation results show that our rate-3/2 code has a lower average decoding complexity while our rate-2 code maintains its lower average decoding complexity in the low SNR region at the expense of a small performance loss.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures and 1 table. Accepted for publication in IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC 2012), 201

A Novel Construction of Multi-group Decodable Space-Time Block Codes

Complex Orthogonal Design (COD) codes are known to have the lowest detection complexity among Space-Time Block Codes (STBCs). However, the rate of square COD codes decreases exponentially with the number of transmit antennas. The Quasi-Orthogonal Design (QOD) codes emerged to provide a compromise between rate and complexity as they offer higher rates compared to COD codes at the expense of an increase of decoding complexity through partially relaxing the orthogonality conditions. The QOD codes were then generalized with the so called g-symbol and g-group decodable STBCs where the number of orthogonal groups of symbols is no longer restricted to two as in the QOD case. However, the adopted approach for the construction of such codes is based on sufficient but not necessary conditions which may limit the achievable rates for any number of orthogonal groups. In this paper, we limit ourselves to the case of Unitary Weight (UW)-g-group decodable STBCs for 2^a transmit antennas where the weight matrices are required to be single thread matrices with non-zero entries in {1,-1,j,-j} and address the problem of finding the highest achievable rate for any number of orthogonal groups. This special type of weight matrices guarantees full symbol-wise diversity and subsumes a wide range of existing codes in the literature. We show that in this case an exhaustive search can be applied to find the maximum achievable rates for UW-g-group decodable STBCs with g>1. For this purpose, we extend our previously proposed approach for constructing UW-2-group decodable STBCs based on necessary and sufficient conditions to the case of UW-g-group decodable STBCs in a recursive manner.Comment: 12 pages, and 5 tables, accepted for publication in IEEE transactions on communication

Asymptotically-Optimal, Fast-Decodable, Full-Diversity STBCs

For a family/sequence of STBCs $\mathcal{C}_1,\mathcal{C}_2,\dots$, with increasing number of transmit antennas $N_i$, with rates $R_i$ complex symbols per channel use (cspcu), the asymptotic normalized rate is defined as $\lim_{i \to \infty}{\frac{R_i}{N_i}}$. A family of STBCs is said to be asymptotically-good if the asymptotic normalized rate is non-zero, i.e., when the rate scales as a non-zero fraction of the number of transmit antennas, and the family of STBCs is said to be asymptotically-optimal if the asymptotic normalized rate is 1, which is the maximum possible value. In this paper, we construct a new class of full-diversity STBCs that have the least ML decoding complexity among all known codes for any number of transmit antennas $N>1$ and rates $R>1$ cspcu. For a large set of $\left(R,N\right)$ pairs, the new codes have lower ML decoding complexity than the codes already available in the literature. Among the new codes, the class of full-rate codes ($R=N$) are asymptotically-optimal and fast-decodable, and for $N>5$ have lower ML decoding complexity than all other families of asymptotically-optimal, fast-decodable, full-diversity STBCs available in the literature. The construction of the new STBCs is facilitated by the following further contributions of this paper:(i) For $g > 1$, we construct $g$-group ML-decodable codes with rates greater than one cspcu. These codes are asymptotically-good too. For $g>2$, these are the first instances of $g$-group ML-decodable codes with rates greater than $1$ cspcu presented in the literature. (ii) We construct a new class of fast-group-decodable codes for all even number of transmit antennas and rates $1 < R \leq 5/4$.(iii) Given a design with full-rank linear dispersion matrices, we show that a full-diversity STBC can be constructed from this design by encoding the real symbols independently using only regular PAM constellations.Comment: 16 pages, 3 tables. The title has been changed.The class of asymptotically-good multigroup ML decodable codes has been extended to a broader class of number of antennas. New fast-group-decodable codes and asymptotically-optimal, fast-decodable codes have been include

High-Rate Space-Time Coded Large MIMO Systems: Low-Complexity Detection and Channel Estimation

In this paper, we present a low-complexity algorithm for detection in high-rate, non-orthogonal space-time block coded (STBC) large-MIMO systems that achieve high spectral efficiencies of the order of tens of bps/Hz. We also present a training-based iterative detection/channel estimation scheme for such large STBC MIMO systems. Our simulation results show that excellent bit error rate and nearness-to-capacity performance are achieved by the proposed multistage likelihood ascent search (M-LAS) detector in conjunction with the proposed iterative detection/channel estimation scheme at low complexities. The fact that we could show such good results for large STBCs like 16x16 and 32x32 STBCs from Cyclic Division Algebras (CDA) operating at spectral efficiencies in excess of 20 bps/Hz (even after accounting for the overheads meant for pilot based training for channel estimation and turbo coding) establishes the effectiveness of the proposed detector and channel estimator. We decode perfect codes of large dimensions using the proposed detector. With the feasibility of such a low-complexity detection/channel estimation scheme, large-MIMO systems with tens of antennas operating at several tens of bps/Hz spectral efficiencies can become practical, enabling interesting high data rate wireless applications.Comment: v3: Performance/complexity comparison of the proposed scheme with other large-MIMO architectures/detectors has been added (Sec. IV-D). The paper has been accepted for publication in IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Signal Processing (JSTSP): Spl. Iss. on Managing Complexity in Multiuser MIMO Systems. v2: Section V on Channel Estimation is update

A Fast Decodable Full-Rate STBC with High Coding Gain for 4x2 MIMO Systems

In this work, a new fast-decodable space-time block code (STBC) is proposed. The code is full-rate and full-diversity for 4x2 multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) transmission. Due to the unique structure of the codeword, the proposed code requires a much lower computational complexity to provide maximum-likelihood (ML) decoding performance. It is shown that the ML decoding complexity is only O(M^{4.5}) when M-ary square QAM constellation is used. Finally, the proposed code has highest minimum determinant among the fast-decodable STBCs known in the literature. Simulation results prove that the proposed code provides the best bit error rate (BER) performance among the state-of-the-art STBCs.Comment: 2013 IEEE 24th International Symposium on Personal Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications (PIMRC), London : United Kingdom (2013

High-Rate Space Coding for Reconfigurable 2x2 Millimeter-Wave MIMO Systems

Millimeter-wave links are of a line-of-sight nature. Hence, multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems operating in the millimeter-wave band may not achieve full spatial diversity or multiplexing. In this paper, we utilize reconfigurable antennas and the high antenna directivity in the millimeter-wave band to propose a rate-two space coding design for 2x2 MIMO systems. The proposed scheme can be decoded with a low complexity maximum-likelihood detector at the receiver and yet it can enhance the bit-error-rate performance of millimeter-wave systems compared to traditional spatial multiplexing schemes, such as the Vertical Bell Laboratories Layered Space-Time Architecture (VBLAST). Using numerical simulations, we demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed code and show its superiority compared to existing rate-two space-time block codes

Low ML-Decoding Complexity, Large Coding Gain, Full-Rate, Full-Diversity STBCs for 2 X 2 and 4 X 2 MIMO Systems

This paper (Part of the content of this manuscript has been accepted for presentation in IEEE Globecom 2008, to be held in New Orleans) deals with low maximum likelihood (ML) decoding complexity, full-rate and full-diversity space-time block codes (STBCs), which also offer large coding gain, for the 2 transmit antenna, 2 receive antenna ($2\times 2$) and the 4 transmit antenna, 2 receive antenna ($4\times 2$) MIMO systems. Presently, the best known STBC for the $2\times2$ system is the Golden code and that for the $4\times2$ system is the DjABBA code. Following the approach by Biglieri, Hong and Viterbo, a new STBC is presented in this paper for the $2\times 2$ system. This code matches the Golden code in performance and ML-decoding complexity for square QAM constellations while it has lower ML-decoding complexity with the same performance for non-rectangular QAM constellations. This code is also shown to be \emph{information-lossless} and \emph{diversity-multiplexing gain} (DMG) tradeoff optimal. This design procedure is then extended to the $4\times 2$ system and a code, which outperforms the DjABBA code for QAM constellations with lower ML-decoding complexity, is presented. So far, the Golden code has been reported to have an ML-decoding complexity of the order of $M^4$ for square QAM of size $M$. In this paper, a scheme that reduces its ML-decoding complexity to $M^2\sqrt{M}$ is presented.Comment: 28 pages, 5 figures, 3 tables, submitted to IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Signal Processin

A universal space-time architecture for multiple-antenna aided systems

In this tutorial, we first review the family of conventional multiple-antenna techniques, and then we provide a general overview of the recent concept of the powerful Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) family based on a universal Space-Time Shift Keying (STSK) philosophy. When appropriately configured, the proposed STSK scheme has the potential of outperforming conventional MIMO arrangements