Full-rate full-diversity space-time block codes for any odd number of transmit antennas

The authors propose a new class of space-time block codes (STBCs) achieving full-rate and full spatial diversity for general quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) when using any odd number of transmit antennas under quasi-static Rayleigh fading channels. These codes are the extended works of the conventional Alamouti-ST constellation-rotating (CR) codes which are designed by serially concatenating CR precoders with the Alamouti scheme for an even number of transmit antennas. From the computer simulation results, it is observed that the best code in this class outperforms the existing ST-CR code and also exhibits error performance within only about 1-dB of the maximal ratio combining receiver. The codes possessing quasi-orthogonal (QO) characteristic are also included in this class, allowing simple maximum likelihood (ML) decoding with almost the same error performance as the best code in this class and the conventional QO-STBCs with full diveristy. These codes have identical or much lowered ML decoding complexity compared with the conventional QO-STBCs.