Hierarchical Space-Time Block Code Recognition Using Correlation Matrices

The blind recognition of communication parameters is a key research issue for commercial and military communication systems. The results of numerous investigations about symbol timing estimation, modulation recognition as well as identification of the number of transmitters have been reported in the literature. But, to our knowledge, none of them have dealt with the recognition of the Space-Time Block Codes (STBC) used in multiple transmitter communications. In order to blindly recognize the STBC of a wireless communication, this paper proposes a method based on the space-time correlations of the received signals. Under perfect timing synchronization and under ideal conditions (full rank channel and a number of receivers greater or equal to the number of transmitters), it shows that the Frobenius norms of these statistics present non-null values whose positions only depend on the STBC at the transmitter side. A classifier for the space-time code recognition of 5 linear STBC (Spatial Multiplexing, Alamouti Coding, and 3 Orthogonal STBC using 3 antennas) is presented. Simulations show that the proposed method performs well even at low signal-to-noise ratios.