Space-time signaling based on Kerdock and Delsafte-Goethals codes

This paper designs space-time codes for standard PSK and QAM signal constellations that have flexible rate, diversity and require no constellation expansion. Central to this construction are binary partitions of the PSK and QAM constellations that appear in codes designed for the Gaussian channel. The space-time codes presented here are designed by separately specifying the different levels of the binary partition in the space-time array. The individual levels are addressed by either the binary symmetric matrices associated with codewords in a Kerdock code or other families of binary matrices. Binary properties of these sets are sufficient to verify the diversity property of the codewords in the complex domain. Larger sets of binary symmetric matrices (such as the set used in Delsarte-Goethals codes) are used to trade diversity protection for increased rate.