Turbo Coded Noncoherent Space-Time Modulation Using Information-Bearing Pilots and Spatial Multiplexing

In this paper, we present a turbo coded space-time modulation scheme for noncoherent block fading channels, where neither the transmitter nor the receiver knows the channel state information. The turbo coded bits are divided into two parts which are respectively transmitted through information-bearing pilots and spatial multiplexing (SM). Since this approach effectively increases the cardinality of the set of possible transmit (space-time) signal matrices, a large rate gain can be obtained without increasing the modulation order, as shown through achievable-rate analysis. At the receiver, an iterative detection-decoding algorithm is performed cooperatively among the turbo decoder, the coherent demapper for the SM, and the noncoherent demapper for the information-bearing pilots through the help of the proposed signal matrix detector, which enables these two demappers to utilize the channel information inherent in all the received symbols within the same fading block. Compared to the previous work in the literature, the proposed scheme can provide advantages in both error performance and complexity.