Coding approaches for multiple antenna transmission in fast fading and OFDM

Multiple-antenna channel coding for orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) transmission over dispersive channels is reconsidered because with frequency interleaving, the effective channel characteristic across subcarriers is rather fast fading. The channel does not comply with the quasistatic model widely assumed for space-time trellis codes (STCs). For that reason, we first study the ideal fast-fading multiple transmit and receive antenna channel and then compare the performance of STCs with that of bit-interleaved coded modulation in fast fading. Mutual information of the ergodic channel is evaluated for numerous modulation scenarios, and capacity comparisons generate guidelines on how to jointly adjust coding rate and modulation cardinality. Bit-based coding offers large flexibility in rate adaptation, and simulation results show that it outperforms STCs in ideal fast fading and, finally, in a realistic OFDM application as well.