High-rate low-delay complex orthogonal space-time block codes for eight transmit antennas

Space-time block codes from orthogonal designs have two advantages, namely, fast maximum-likelihood (ML) decoding and full diversity. Complex orthogonal designs of maximum possible rate of full, 3/4, and 3/4 have been presented for two, three, and four transmit antennas respectively. For five, six, seven and eight transmit antennas, four generalized complex orthogonal space-time block codes of rates 2/3, 2/3, 5/8, and 5/8 were proposed recently. In this correspondence, the complex orthogonal designs with maximal rates and minimal decoding delays for eight transmit antennas are presented. Compared with the same rate code schemes, the proposed scheme has lower bit error rate (BER) due to the achievable minimum decoding delay on the condition of the same system throughput. Simulation results showed that the present space-time block code could achieve significant diversity gain.