A 2×2 Space-Time Code with Non-Vanishing Determinants and Fast Maximum Likelihood Decoding

A new 2timesx2 full-rate full-diversity space-time block code (STBC) is proposed that satisfies the non-vanishing determinant property and offers a reduced computational complexity as compared to the other existing full-rate codes. The performance of our new STBC is shown to be comparable to that of the best full-rate STBCs known so far. This performance is achieved at the decoding complexity which is substantially lower than that of the standard sphere decoder.