A rank criterion for QAM space-time codes with application to turbo coding

Sufficient conditions to ensure QAM space-time codes achieve full space diversity in quasi-static fading channel are presented. The conditions are on code words or generator matrices instead of on every code word pair. This simplifies the check of full space diversity of a code. Based on these conditions, full space diversity parallel concatenated turbo codes are proposed to use in a multiple element antenna environment. Comparing with space-time trellis codes, the simulations show it has robust performance at both quasi-static fading channel and time varying fading channel.