Design of diagonal algebraic space time codes with 8-star-PSK signals

Diagonal algebraic space time (DAST) block codes was proved to outperform the codes from orthogonal design with the equivalent spectral efficiency when the number of transmit antennas employed is larger than 2. However, due to the limitation on the signal constellation with complex integer points, no 3 bits/symbol DAST block code was studied previously. In this paper, we propose a general form of an 8-star-PSK constellations with integer points and present some theoretical results on the performance of the equivalent 8-star-PSK modulations. By using our proposed 8-star-PSKs, we present a search algorithm to construct optimal DAST codes with 3 bits per symbol under some criteria and investigate their performance over flat Rayleigh fading channels.