Supporting integrated services in wireless networks with space-time block-coded transmissions

Integrated services in wireless networks call for a physical layer which can support multirate transmissions and guarantee symbol recovery at the receiver. Multirate transmissions are necessary for data applications with diverse needs in throughput/delay, whereas symbol recovery leads to quality of service guarantees in terms of bit error rate. We develop a multiuser physical layer framework, which can be used in a wireless integrated services architecture. Capitalizing on space-time coding and block transmissions, we show how space-time transmit antenna diversity can provide transmission rates of arbitrarily fine resolution while guaranteeing symbol recovery irrespective of the FIR wireless channel.