Trellis coding for diagonally layered space-time systems

Foschini´s (1996) diagonally layered space-time transmission system known as D-BLAST is an advanced architecture designed for a Rayleigh fading environment using multiple element antenna arrays at both the transmit and receive sites to achieve very high spectral efficiencies. In this paper we examine the performance of trellis codes that are designed to have a distance structure that is matched to the periodic signal-to-noise ratio variation of the channel created by D-BLAST, under the assumption that the channel is static during one burst but may change from burst to burst. We show that trellis coding comes within 2 dB of the best theoretical outage curve possible with D-BLAST.