Adaptive Channel-Matched Extended Alamouti Space-Time Code Exploiting Partial Feedback

Abstract

Since the publication of Alamouti's famous space-time block code, various quasi-orthogonal space-time block codes (QSTBC) for multi-input multi-output (MIMO) fading channels for more than two transmit antennas have been proposed. It has been shown that these codes cannot achieve full diversity at full rate. In this paper, we present a simple feedback scheme for rich scattering (flat Rayleigh fading) MIMO channels that improves the coding gain and diversity of a QSTBC for 2n (n = 3, 4,…) transmit antennas. The relevant channel state information is sent back from the receiver to the transmitter quantized to one or two bits per code block. In this way, signal transmission with an improved coding gain and diversity near to the maximum diversity order is achieved. Such high diversity can be exploited with either a maximum-likelihood receiver or low-complexity zero-forcing receiver.