Extended balanced space–time block coding with transmit antenna selection

The original proposal of the extended balanced space–time block coding (EBSTBC) and its special subsets like balanced space–time block coding utilize all available transmit antennas to guarantee full diversity and to maximize the coding gain when few bits of feedback from the destination to the source are available. Because of the construction technique of EBSTBC, an antenna out of N transmit antennas does not contribute coding gain. To prevent this, a novel EBSTBC design and transmit scheme is proposed. This scheme transmits only N  − 1 antennas out of N antennas and an antenna that maximizes the received signal‐to‐noise ratio at the destination doubles its transmit power. The proposed scheme improves performance of the EBSTBC and its subsets and outperforms closed‐loop extended orthogonal space–time block codes, phase feedback based extended space–time block codes, partial phase combining and transmit antenna selection schemes. The difference in performance becomes more prevalent in the presence of feedback errors. The proposed technique can be applied for orthogonal space–time block codes and quasi‐orthogonal space–time block codes if the destination informs the source which antenna has the highest gain. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.