Signal Set Design for Full-Diversity Low-Decoding-Complexity Differential Scaled-Unitary STBCs

The problem of designing high rate, full diversity noncoherent space-time block codes (STBCs) with low encoding and decoding complexity is addressed. First, the notion of p-group encodable and p-group decodable linear STBCs is introduced. Then for a known class of rate-1 linear designs, an explicit construction of fully-diverse signal sets that lead to four-group encodable and four-group decodable differential scaled unitary STBCs for any power of two number of antennas is provided. Previous works on differential STBCs either sacrifice decoding complexity for higher rate or sacrifice rate for lower decoding complexity.