A practical space-frequency block coded OFDM scheme for fast fading broadband channels

Multi-antenna OFDM system calls the consideration of coding across antennas and OFDM tones. Derived from the design criteria for space-time block codes (STBC), the coding scheme termed space-frequency block codes (SFBC) is conceived to achieve the maximum diversity order for a given number of transmit and receive antennas. In this contribution, a practical space-frequency block coded OFDM scheme (SFBC-OFDM) is proposed for fast fading broadband channels. Besides, this novel scheme is rather flexible to combat the frequency-selective fading by decreasing the coding size. Simulation and analysis show that our scheme outperforms the STBC-OFDM scheme in the scenario with high vehicle speed and large delay spread when the number of subcarriers in the OFDM system is large.