Efficient coding and decoding methods for multi-antenna wireless communication systems

As existing wireless communication systems and standards cannot fully support the new, emerging multimedia applications, the designers of future wireless systems will have to face the challenge of devising coding and modulation methods that can provide reliable communication at very high data rates. To achieve this goal, one of the most promising techniques suggested recently is the exploitation of the spatial dimension: by employing multiple transmit and receive antennas, the detrimental effects of channel fading can be significantly reduced.; This thesis aims to contribute to the field of wireless communications by developing efficient coding and decoding methods for systems having multiple transmit and receive antennas. First, we propose a systematic space-time trellis code construction method for the quasi-static, flat multi-antenna channel model by exploiting the trellis structure. The method can be used to construct space-time trellis codes for an arbitrary number of transmit antennas and any memoryless modulation. Then, we consider the problem of space-time code design for correlated fading channels, and derive the performance criteria assuming that the space-time correlation matrix is of full rank. We also propose a new code design criterion, the uniqueness criterion, and develop a systematic space-time trellis code design method for the correlated fading channel model. Finally, we propose a fast decoding algorithm for space-frequency-coded multi-antenna OFDM systems. The central component of the algorithm is a modulation independent decoding framework, which is based on a new interpretation of the sphere decoding problem. Using this decoding framework, we devise several SF block code decoding algorithms: a modulation independent decoding algorithm that can be used with any memoryless modulation, and 2 modulation specific decoding algorithms for QAM and PSK constellations using the idea of fast nearest neighbor search.