Code construction and performance evaluation of Space Time Trellis Code (STTC) over Rayleigh fading channel

Space-Time Trellis Codes (STTCs) combine modulation and trellis coding to transmit information over multiple transmit antennas and MIMO channels. In this paper, code construction and performance analysis of different STTCs for various modulation schemes (e.g. BPSK, QPSK) over Rayleigh flat fading channel are presented. Improved form of STTCs using generator matrix and delay diversity is also described. Comparison of the code performance of STTCs with Orthogonal Space-Time Block Codes (OSTBCs) and Quasi-Orthogonal Space-Time Block Codes (QOSTBCs) for two transmit antennas and one or more receive antennas are shown. The result shows that STTCs provide high coding gain and outperform OSTBCs and QOSTBCs. It is possible to improve the performance of STTCs by increasing the number of states of the trellis.