An unequal error protection scheme for multiple input multiple output systems

Rapid progress has been made in the use of spatial diversity for reliable communication over wireless channels. A large amount of work has been done in the field of unequal error protection and joint source-channel coding for reliable and efficient transmission of data over wireline and wireless channels. However, the use of unequal error protection in the temporal domain, combined with the advantages of multiple input multiple output communication systems has yet to be explored. In this paper an unequal error protection scheme based on the combined use of turbo codes and space-time codes for communication over wireless channels is proposed. This scheme assigns more coding gain and temporal diversity to important bits but assigns more spatial diversity and less coding gain to less important bits. Simulations illustrate a 25% reduction in average transmission time and a 15 dB improvement compared with no spatial diversity.