On Trellis Coded Noncoherent Space-Time Modulation

Unitary space-time modulation (USTM) is well-tailored for noncoherent space-time modulation. Trellis coded USTM (TC-USTM) can obtain significant coding gains over uncoded USTM for the noncoherent block fading channel. Conventional TC-USTM schemes expand the signal set of uncoded USTM by a factor of two. In this letter, we propose a new TC-USTM scheme in which the size of USTM set is not limited to be just double for uncoded USTM. However, in TC-USTM schemes, because signals of the same trellis branch are transmitted over the same fading coefficients, one trellis branch can only obtain one temporal diversity. In this letter, we also propose a new trellis coded noncoherent space-time modulation scheme by interleaving space-time signals. The proposed scheme can enlarge temporal diversity at the price of increased complexity and delay. Simulation results demonstrate the excellent error performances of codes found by computer searches for both schemes.