Evaluation of space-time turbo-codes for third generation systems

We consider the application of turbo-codes in space-time coding techniques for multiple antenna channels, as a means of approaching the remarkable capacities that have been predicted for such channels. We describe a technique for the evaluation of space-time coding techniques, and apply it to two alternative space-time turbo-coding techniques, which we refer to as “concatenated” and “mapped”. The latter achieves a much higher link capacity than the former. We show that despite this rate difference, the BER performance of the two is in principle nearly identical. This suggests that the “mapped” approach is more suitable for achieving high data throughputs, where conditions allow it. We also propose a means of implementing this technique within a third generation standard