Robust space-time codes for correlated Rayleigh fading channels

Space-time (ST) coding has emerged as an effective strategy to enhance performance of wireless communications in fading environments. Many different ST coding schemes have been proposed to achieve reliable communications in independent fading channels. However, a design of robust ST codes for correlated fading channels has not been addressed. In this paper, we propose a simple robust ST coding scheme that achieves robust performance over a wide range of fading conditions. The key to achieve robust performance is to formulate code design criteria that are not dependent on the channel correlation statistics. A provably robust scheme can be formulated by concatenating a full-rank ST block code with an outer encoder. We derive several robust code examples via the concatenated orthogonal ST block code and TCM construction. The simulation results show that some traditional ST codes perform poorly, whereas the proposed codes achieve robust performance over a broad range of fading conditions.