A simplified Diagonal BLAST architecture with iterative parallel-interference cancellation receivers

We propose a simplified Diagonal-BLAST (D-BLAST) architecture with parallel soft interference cancellation receiver based on the Turbo-BLAST (T-BLAST) architecture. In the T-BLAST architecture, the inter-substream coding is designed by a combination of random space-time interleaving and independent block encoding of each substream, using the same forward-error correction (FEC) code. We show that for the T-BLAST architecture, by using a systematic space-interleaving design that layers each substream diagonally across the antennas, a simplified diagonal inter-substream coding can be achieved without undue implementation complexity. The proposed diagonal inter-substream coding also facilitates the use of an iterative parallel interference cancellation receiver for decoding the simultaneously transmitted data, thereby achieving more capacity compared to the achievable capacity of traditional BLAST (Bell Labs Layered Space Time) architectures using sequential interference cancellation receivers. In this paper, we also present simulation results on fading channels, which confirm these findings.