On the design of full-rate full-diversity space-time block codes for multiple-input–multiple-output systems with a turbo minimum mean square error equaliser at the receiver side

International audienceNon-orthogonal Space-Time Block (STB) code structures used to be optimized considering a maximum likelihood (ML) detection, but depending on the modulation order and/or the antenna number,the prohibitive complexity of such a receiver makes it infeasible in practice. Suboptimal low-complexity receiver structures like linear detectors can be applied instead, yielding degradation of performance compared to the predictions. When a forward error correction (FEC) code is used upstream of the STB, code, an iterative receiver consisting of a FEC decoder and an interference canceller (IC) cooperating according to the turbo equalization principle, can achieve near-optimal performance. This paper aims to define the construction of full-rate full-diversity linear dispersion codes (LDC) with reduced peak-toaverage power ratio (PAPR), taking into account the serial concatenation with a FEC at the transmitter and a minimum mean square error (MMSE) turbo equalizer at the receiver. Optimization criteria are mutual information maximization, symbol error rate minimization at the MMSE-IC output, fulldiversity thanks to the threaded algebraic space time (TAST) concept and PAPR minimization. Explicit constructions are given and the resulting code efficiency is analyzed through comparison with equivalent perfect space time block (PSTB) codes