Multilevel Space-Time Trellis Codes for Rayleigh Fading Channels.

Abstract

Demand for capacity in wireless communication systems has been rapidly growing world- wide. This has been driven by increasing data rate requirements of cellular mobile systems, and demand for wireless Internet and multimedia services. As the available radio spec- trum is limited, higher data rates can only be achieved by designing more efficient signaling techniques. In this thesis, we propose a new transmission scheme, which benefits from the advantages of conventional space-time trellis codes (CSTTCs) but does not have the disadvantages, especially for larger signal constellations. We achieve this by developing a new class of codes, called Multilevel Space-Time Trellis Codes (IMLSTTC). The new scheme provides a scalable and promising alternative to CSTTCs, by providing the system designer with the flexibility to choose any desired balance between code performance, complexity and throughput. The proposed scheme outperforms layered schemes at high SNRs, using a smaller number of antennas.