Full Rate Space Time Codes for Large Number of Transmitting Antennas with Linear Complexity Decoding

Among the specification of the 5G networks two crucial aspects are the support of fast mobility and high data rates. With fast mobility, the fading channels phenomenon become crucial, resulting in the need for multiple input/output channel to create spatial diversity. Space time codes (STC) have been shown to be well used with the Multiple Input Multiple Output channel. The Orthogonal STC (OSTC) family of codes is known to achieve full diversity as well as very simple implementation of the Maximum Likelihood (ML) decoder. However, it was also proven that with a complex symbol constellation one cannot achieve a full rate code when the number of transmitting antennas is larger than two. Quasi-OSTC (QSTC) can have full rate even for more than two transmitting antennas but with the penalty of decoding complexity which becomes severe if the constellation size is large. In order to tackle this inherent drawback of the OSTC/QSTC and to be able to support the 5G high data rate demand, we have come up with a different STC code that, when used with a new transmission and decoding methods, achieves full rate while maintaining linear complexity decoding for any number of transmit antennas. It can also be shown that when the transmitter knows the strongest channel (through minimal feedback) the code also achieves full diversity along with better error rate than the OSTC and the QSTC.