Adaptive interlaced space-time transmission

We introduce an interlaced space-time transmission scheme for multiple antenna links, that can compensate the spectral efficiency loss due to the radio channel variations and the associated channel estimation errors. The solution is constructed using multi-coding such that the transmitter interlaces space-time encoded blocks of different codewords belonging to potentially variable-rate codebooks in each coherence interval. The receiver demultiplexes the interlaced codewords to perform sequential decoding along with a progressive refinement of the channel estimation using virtual pilot expansion such that the correctly decoded packets are used as pilots for channel estimation for next packets. We develop achievable rate results for Alamouti code over block fading channels and verify that the theoretical gain is attainable using a rate-matched LTE Turbo code.