A novel maximum likelihood decoding algorithm for orthogonal space-time block codes

In this letter, we propose a low complexity maximum likelihood (ML) decoding algorithm for orthogonal spacetime block codes (OSTBCs) based on the real-valued lattice representation and QR decomposition.We show that for a system with rate r = K/T, where K is the number of transmitted symbols per T time slots, the proposed algorithm decomposes the original complex-valued system into a parallel system represented by 2K real-valued components, thus allowing for a simple and independent detection of the real and imaginary parts of each complex transmitted symbol. We further show that for square L-QAM constellations, the proposed algorithm reduces the decoding computational complexity from O(L) for conventional ML to O(radicL) without sacrificing the performance.