Computationally Efficient Signal Detection for STBC-OFDM Systems in Fast-Fading Channels

In this paper, we propose a novel signal detection method that achieves the maximum likelihood (ML) performance but requires much less computational complexity than the ML detection. When the well-known linear decoding method is used for space-time block coded (STBC) OFDM systems in fast-fading channels, co-channel interference (CCI) as well as inter-carrier interference (ICI) occurs. A maximum likelihood (ML) method can be employed to deal with the CCI; however, its computational complexity is very high. In this paper, we propose a signal detection method for orthogonal space-time coded OFDM systems that achieves the identical error performance as the ML method, but requires much less computational complexity.