On EXIT-chart analysis of coherent and noncoherent space-time codes

We propose a "turbo" coding scheme for the multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) Rayleigh fading channel consisting of the serially concatenation of outer channel codes and different coherent as well as noncoherent space-time codes as the inner code. At the receiver, we apply iterative space-time detection and decoding. We analyze the impact of different mapping strategies on the information transfer of the soft-input-soft-output (SISO) space-time detector for the case of orthogonal space-time codes (OSTBC) and derive some criteria for the optimum mapping strategy. We show that additional performance gains can be obtained by different mapping strategies. Furthermore, we use extrinsic information transfer characteristics (EXIT-charts) in order to predict the performance and the behaviour of the system.