Low SNR design of space-time block codes based on union bound and indecomposable error patterns

• Published in: 2004 IEEE International Conference on Communications (IEEE Cat. No.04CH37577) Vol. 2; pp. 707 - 711 Vol.2
• Main Authors: Vajapeyam, M., Geng, J., Mitra, U.
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: Piscataway, New Jersey IEEE 2004
• Subjects: Applied sciences; Block codes; Coding, codes; Conferences; Constraint optimization; Design optimization; Error analysis; Exact sciences and technology; Fading; Information, signal and communications theory; Pairwise error probability; Receiving antennas; Search methods; Signal and communications theory; Systems, networks and services of telecommunications; Telecommunications; Telecommunications and information theory; Transmission and modulation (techniques and equipments); Transmitters; Transmitting antennas; Fading channels; Performance evaluation; Block code; Space-time codes; Error probability; Error estimation; Simulation; Worst case method; Wireless telecommunication; Telecommunication channels; Algorithm; Signal to noise ratio
• ISBN: 0780385330; 9780780385337
• DOI: 10.1109/ICC.2004.1312593

Space-time block codes have attracted recent interest due to their ability to take advantage of available diversity to transmit data over a wireless fading channel. Since they were first introduced, several strategies have been proposed for their design. In most cases, these designs were optimized for high SNR through a worst case pairwise error probability analysis and either placed strict constraints on the structure of codewords or were limited to codesets of low cardinality. This work addresses the issue of code design specifically for low SNR environments using union bound-based performance criteria which are SNR dependent. A more accurate union bound-based measure for performance evaluation of codes is developed and a variation of a locally optimum algorithm used to systematically construct good codeword sets is presented. New found codes are compared via simulation with other existing codes and are shown to exhibit improved performance.