Pragmatic Space-Time Trellis Codes for Block Fading Channels

A pragmatic approach for the construction of space-time codes over block fading channels is investigated. The approach consists in using common convolutional encoders and Viterbi decoders with suitable generators and rates, thus greatly simplifying the implementation of space-time codes. For the design of pragmatic space-time codes a methodology is proposed and applied, based on the extension of the concept of generalized transfer function for convolutional codes over block fading channels. Our search algorithm produces the convolutional encoder generators of pragmatic space-time codes for various number of states, number of antennas and fading rate. Finally it is shown that, for the investigated cases, the performance of pragmatic space-time codes is better than that of previously known space-time codes, confirming that they are a valuable choice in terms of both implementation complexity and performance.