Space-Time Trellis and Space-Time Block Coding Versus Adaptive Modulation and Coding Aided OFDM for Wideband Channels

Abstract

Abstract—The achievable performance of channel coded spacetime trellis (STT) codes and space-time block (STB) codes transmitted over wideband channels is studied in the context of schemes having an effective throughput of 2 bits/symbol (BPS) and 3 BPS. At high implementational complexities, the best performance was typically provided by Alamouti’s unity-rate G2 code in both the 2-BPS and 3-BPS scenarios. However, if a low complexity implementation is sought, the 3-BPS 8PSK space-time trellis code outperfoms the G2 code. The G2 space-time block code is also combined with symbol-by-symbol adaptive orthogonal frequency division multiplex (AOFDM)modems and turbo convolutional channel codecs for enhancing the system’s performance. It was concluded that upon exploiting the diversity effect of theG2 space-time block code, the channel-induced fading effects are mitigated, and therefore, the benefits of adaptive modulation erode. In other words, once the time- and frequency-domain fades of the wideband channel have been counteracted by the diversity-aided G2 code, the benefits of adaptive modulation erode, and hence, it is sufficient to employ fixed-mode modems. Therefore, the low-complexity approach of mitigating the effects of fading can be viewed as employing a single-transmitter, single-receiver-based AOFDMmodem. By contrast, it is sufficient to employ fixed-mode OFDM modems when the added complexity of a two-transmitter G2 scheme is affordable.

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ORCID for L. Hanzo: orcid.org/0000-0002-2636-5214

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