Lattice code decoder for space-time codes

We explore the lattice sphere packing representation of a multi-antenna system and the algebraic space-time (ST) codes. We apply the sphere decoding (SD) algorithm to the resulted lattice code. For the uncoded system, SD yields, with small increase in complexity, a huge improvement over the well-known V-BLAST detection algorithm. SD of algebraic ST codes exploits the full diversity of the coded multi-antenna system, and makes the proposed scheme very appealing to take advantage of the richness of the multi-antenna environment. The fact that the SD does not depend on the constellation size, gives rise to systems with very high spectral efficiency, maximum-likelihood performance, and low decoding complexity.