High rate space frequency block codes for next generation 802.11 WLANs

Achieving higher link rates in support of newer services and increasing range are the two main goals for next generation wireless LAN networks. This work primarily contributes to a high rate solution, based on a novel extension to the rate-1 space-frequency block code (SFBC) design in L. Shao et al. (Dec. 2003) to full rate case. To further improve performance without increasing complexity, we propose unequal power allocation at the transmitter with no requirement of channel knowledge. Compared with standard 802.11a transmitter which uses convolutional code with a single transmit antenna and antenna selection diversity among 2 receive antennas with soft Viterbi decoding, we show that our HR-SFBC code with 2 transmit antenna not only doubles the throughput (as expected) but also provides additional link margin (and hence improves range).