Space-time block coded IQ-interleaved joint coding and modulation for AWGN and Rayleigh fading channels

Space-Time Block Coded (STBC) In-phase/Quadrature-phase (IQ)-interleaved Trellis Coded Modulation (TCM) and Turbo TCM (TTCM) schemes are proposed, which are capable of quadrupling the achievable diversity order of the conventional symbol-interleaved TCM and TTCM schemes, when two transmit antennas are employed. The increased diversity order of the proposed schemes provides significant additional coding gains, when communicating over non-dispersive Rayleigh fading channels, which is achieved without compromising the coding gain attainable over Gaussian channels. Bit-Interleaved Coded Modulation (BICM) as well as Iteratively Decoded BICM (BICM-ID) are also incorporated into the proposed system and their performance is compared to that of TCM and TTCM.