Space-time trellis codes with receive antenna selection in fast fading

The performance of space-time trellis codes with antenna selection over fast fading channels is studied. A selection criterion is adopted that is based on selecting L out of the available M receive antennas that results in maximising the instantaneous signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) at the receiver, where L≤M. It is shown that the resulting diversity order with antenna selection deteriorates and becomes a function of the number of selected antennas. This is unlike the case for slow fading in which the diversity order is always preserved with antenna selection when the underlying space-time code is full-rank.