Space-time block coding for four transmit antennas with closed loop feedback over frequency selective fading channels

Orthogonal space-time block coding is a transmit diversity method that has the potential to enhance forward capacity. For a communication system with a complex alphabet, full diversity and full code rate space-time codes are available only for two antennas, and for more than two antennas full diversity is achieved only when the code rate is lower than one. A quasi-orthogonal code could provide full code rate, but at the expense of loss in diversity, which results in degradation of performance. We propose a closed loop feedback scheme for quasi-orthogonal codes which provides full diversity while achieving the full code rate. We investigate, in particular, the performance of this scheme, when the feedback information is quantised and when the fading of the channel is frequency-selective.