Opportunistic space-time block codes

Rate and diversity impose a fundamental trade-off in space-time coding. High-rate space-time codes come at a cost of lower diversity, and high reliability (diversity) implies a lower rate. In [2], [3], we 1 proposed a different point of view where we designed high-rate space-time codes that have a high-diversity code embedded within them. This allows a form of wireless communications where the high-rate code opportunistically takes advantage of good channel realizations while the embedded high-diversity code ensures that at least part of the information is decoded reliably. In [2], [3], we presented the code design strategy, criteria, and several constructions. In this paper, our focus is on decoding algorithms, quantifying the performance of the code examples in [2], [3] and presenting new examples.