Symbol-by-symbol detection of space-time coded continuous phase modulated signals over fast Rayleigh fading channels

We investigate the detection of space time coded (STC) signals modulated using continuous phase modulation (CPM) in fast Rayleigh fading channels. A symbol-by-symbol iterative detector with an optimum front-end is derived, and its practical implementation using the concept of principal component analysis (PCA) is considered. To assess the performance, numerical examples for different STC-CPM schemes are presented. According to the simulation results, the proposed detector obtains very good power efficiencies. Moreover, the bit error rate (BER) performance of the proposed detector is in the range of 0.5-1 dB from the case without fading, highlighting its effectiveness to mitigate fading.