A New Class of TAST Codes With A Simplified Tree Structure

We consider in this paper the design of full diversity and high rate space-time codes with moderate decoding complexity for arbitrary number of transmit and receive antennas and arbitrary input alphabets. We focus our attention to codes from the threaded algebraic space-time (TAST) framework since the latter includes most known full diversity space-time codes. We propose a new construction of the component single-input single-output (SISO) encoders such that the equivalent code matrix has an upper triangular form. We accomplish this task by designing each SISO encoder to create an ISI-channel in each thread. This, in turn, greatly simplifies the QR-decomposition of the composite channel and code matrix, which is essential for optimal or near-optimal tree search algorithms, such as the sequential decoder.