A dual combining based decoding scheme for two-branched mobile STBC

In this paper, a dual combining based decoding scheme is proposed to enhance the detection performance of space-time block coding with two transmit antennas in a highly time-varying mobile channel. The proposed scheme analyzes the signal-to-noise ratio and signal-to interference plus noise ratio of decision variables for a zero-forcing combiner (ZFC) and a matched filter combiner (MFC), respectively. Based on the analysis, we derive a sophisticated decoding scheme which utilizes tentative detection symbols of the ZFC based decoder to cancel inter-symbol interference from the decision variables of the MFC. Computer simulations show that the proposed scheme outperforms the conventional decoding scheme with the ZFC or the MFC.