Single- and Multiple-Antenna Constellations for Communication Over Unknown Frequency-Selective Fading Channels

Data transmission through frequency-selective block fading channels is considered in the case where neither the transmitter nor the receiver has any knowledge of the channel coefficients. Standard code design approaches for this scenario take channel uncertainty at the receiver into account by splitting the available channel coherence time into a part dedicated to training symbols utilized for channel estimation and a second part using an error-control coding scheme that is designed without channel uncertainty in mind. In contrast, in this correspondence joint codes are designed that are optimized for communication over the unknown channel and operate over the full coherence time. Using an approximation of the union bound on codeword error probability as design criterion, codes based on general complex-valued symbols are obtained with a gradient search optimization technique. Numerical examples for both single antenna as well as multiple-antenna systems illustrate that significant improvement over training-based schemes can be obtained