Improved space-time trellis coded modulation scheme on slow Rayleigh fading channels

It has been established that the appropriate criteria for space-time trellis coded modulation (STTCM) design on slow Rayleigh fading channels are maximisation of the minimum rank and the minimum determinant of the distance matrices. It is demonstrated that when STTCM is used in systems with a large product (>3) of the numbers of transmit and receive antennas, the design of codes with maximum coding gain is governed by the minimum trace of the distance matrices. A number of new codes based on the proposed design criterion have been constructed and shown to be superior to other known codes