Performance Analysis of Iteratively Decoded Variable-Length Space-Time Coded Modulation

It is demonstrated that iteratively decoded variable length space time coded modulation (VL-STCM-ID) schemes are capable of simultaneously providing both coding gain as well as multiplexing and diversity gain. The VL-STCM-ID arrangement is a jointly designed iteratively decoded scheme combining source coding, channel coding, modulation as well as spatial diversity/multiplexing. In this contribution, we analyse the iterative decoding convergence of the VL-STCM-ID scheme using symbol-based three-dimensional EXIT charts. The performance of the VL-STCM-ID scheme is shown to be about 14.6 dB better than that of the fixed length STCM (FL-STCM) benchmarker at a source symbol error ratio of 10^-4, when communicating over uncorrelated Rayleigh fading channels. The performance of the VL-STCM-ID scheme when communicating over correlated Rayleigh fading channels using imperfect channel state information is also studied.