Performance of space-time coding on fading channels

Novel code design criteria for space-time codes on slow Rayleigh fading channels are presented. It is shown that the code performance is dominated by the minimum rank r and the minimum determinant of the codeword distance matrix when the product of the minimum rank r and the number of receive antennas n_R is less than 4, which is consistent with the design criteria derived by Tarokh et al. (see IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol.44, no.2, p.744-65, March 1998). However, when r·n_R is greater than or equal to 4, the code error performance is dominated by the minimum trace of the codeword distance matrix