Blind ML detection of orthogonal space-time block codes: efficient high-performance implementations

Orthogonal space-time block codes (OSTBCs) have attracted much attention owing to their simple code construction, maximal diversity gain, and low maximum-likelihood (ML) detection complexity when channel state information (CSI) is available at the receiver. This paper addresses the problem of ML OSTBC detection with unknown CSI. Focusing on the binary and quaternary PSK constellations, we show that blind ML OSTBC detection can be simplified to a Boolean quadratic program (BQP). From an optimization viewpoint the BQP is still a computationally hard problem, and we propose two alternatives for dealing with this inherent complexity. First, we consider the semidefinite relaxation (SDR) approach, which leads to a suboptimal, but accurate, blind ML detection algorithm with an affordable worst-case computational cost. We also consider the sphere decoding approach, which leads to an exact blind ML detection algorithm that remains computationally expensive in the worst case, but generally incurs a reasonable average computational cost. For the two algorithms, we study implementation methods that can significantly reduce the computational complexity. Simulation results indicate that the two blind ML detection algorithms are competitive, in that the bit error performance of the two algorithms is almost the same and is noticeably better than that of some other existing blind detectors. Moreover, numerical studies show that the SDR algorithm provides better complexity performance than the sphere decoder in the worst-case sense, and vice versa in the average sense.