Decoding of full rate space-time block code without channel state information in frequency-selective channels

Space-time coding and modulation exploit the presence of multiple transmit antennas to improve performance on multipath radio channels. Thus far, most work on space-time coding has assumed that perfect channel estimates are available at the receiver. In certain situations, however, it may be difficult or costly to estimate the channel accurately. We propose a new decoding algorithm for full rate space-time block coding in frequency selective channels, which accomplishes the decoding directly from the over-sampled system outputs without the knowledge of the channel. Combined with the unique feature of space-time block coding, the subspace of the transmitted signal is exploited to carry out the decoding. Monte Carlo simulations give the performance comparison of this algorithm against that with available channel information.