A new full-rate full-diversity orthogonal space-time block coding scheme

In this work, we present a new space-time orthogonal coding scheme with full-rate and full-diversity. The proposed space-time coding scheme can be used on quaternary phase-shift keyed (QPSK) transceiver systems with four transmit antennas and any number of receivers. An additional feature is that the coded signals transmitted through all four transmit antennas do not experience any constellation expansion. The performance of the proposed coding scheme is studied in comparison with that of 1/2-rate full-diversity orthogonal space-time code, quasi-orthogonal code, as well as constellation-rotated quasi-orthogonal code. Our study shows that the proposed coding scheme offers full rate and outperforms the 1/2-rate orthogonal codes as well as full-rate quasi-orthogonal codes when the signal-to-noise increases. Compared to the constellation-rotated quasi-orthogonal codes (the improved QO scheme), the newly proposed code has the advantage of not expanding the signal constellation at each transmit antenna. The performance of the newly proposed code is comparable to that of the improved QO scheme.