Systematic design of Space-Time convolutional codes

Space-Time convolutional code (STCC) is a technique that combines transmit diversity and coding to improve reliability in wireless fading channels. In this paper, we demonstrate a systematic design of M-QAM STCCs utilizing QPSK STCC as component codes for any number of transmit antennas.Moreover, our low complexity decoding algorithm allows the decoding complexity to increase linearly by the number of transmit antennas. Our method uses a group interference cancellation technique also known as combined array processing (CAP) technique. Simulation result demonstrates that the new CAP technique outperforms the CAP de..ned by [1] by 0.8 dB for a frame error rate (FER) of 10^-2 and is 1.2 dB away from our new proposed M-QAM STCC design whenM=16.