Space-Time Product Convolutional Codes with Full Antenna Diversity

Product convolutional codes are investigated as an alternative concatenated scheme to construct full antenna diversity space-time codes. The proposed space-time code construction is analyzed and the conditions to achieve full diversity are determined. The resulting space-time codes are compared with space-time serially concatenated and woven convolutional codes. Simulation results for quasi-static Rayleigh fading channels show that space-time product convolutional codes have a better performance (in terms of bit error rate) and a smaller iterative decoding complexity than space-time serially concatenated and woven convolutional codes