Quasi-orthogonal space-time block codes with full diversity

Space-time block codes from orthogonal designs proposed by Alamouti (1998), and Tarokh-Jafarkhani-Calderbank (199) have attracted much attention lately due to their fast maximum-likelihood (ML) decoding and full diversity. However, the maximum symbol transmission rate of a space-time block code from complex orthogonal designs for complex constellations is only 3/4 for three and four transmit antennas. Jafarkhani (see IEEE Trans. Commun., vol.49, no.1, p.1-4, 2001), and Tirkkonen-Boariu-Hottinen (see ISSSTA 2000, pp.429-432, September 2000) proposed space-time block codes from quasi-orthogonal designs, where the orthogonality is relaxed to provide higher symbol transmission rates. With the quasi-orthogonal structure, these codes still have a fast ML decoding, but do not have the full diversity. In this paper, we design quasi-orthogonal space-time block codes with full diversity by properly choosing the signal constellations. In particular, we propose that half symbols in a quasi-orthogonal design are from a signal constellation A and another half of them are optimal selections from the rotated constellation e^jφ A. The optimal rotation angles φ are obtained for some commonly used signal constellations. The resulting codes have both full diversity and fast ML decoding.