MIMO iterative decoding of serial concatenation using space-time trellis codes

A multiple input, multiple output (MIMO) iterative decoding structure is proposed for serial concatenated codes with space-time trellis code (STTC) as outer code and rate-1 recursive convolutional encoders as inner coder. To preserve the full diversity gain of the space-time code and to achieve additional coding gain, the proposed MIMO iterative decoder decodes jointly the received symbol streams from all the transmit antennas. The bit error rate simulation of four-state STTC employing the proposed scheme shows additional 3 dB coding gain, without reducing the code rate, compared to that achievable by STTC alone