Generalised suboptimum decoding for space-time codes in quasistatic flat fading channels

Abstract

A generalised version of principal ratio combining (PRC) is presented, which is a near-optimum detection scheme for spacetime codes in quasistatic flat fading environments. It has been shown recently that the performance penalty increases as the number of receive antennas increases. In the proposed scheme, K receive antennas are grouped together, and the PRC detection method is applied to each;group. This shows a flexible tradeoff between performance and decoding complexity by choosing the appropriate value of K.