Space-time codes for high data rate wireless communication: performance criteria

We consider the design of channel codes for improving the data rate and/or the reliability of communications over fading channels using multiple transmit antennas. Here, data is encoded by a channel code and the encoded data is split into n streams that are simultaneously transmitted using n transmit antennas. The received signal at each receive antenna is a linear superposition of the n transmitted signals. We derive performance criteria for designing channel codes under the assumption that the fading is slow and frequency non-selective. Performance is shown to be determined by diversity gain quantified by ranks and coding gain quantified by determinants of certain matrices that are constructed from the code sequences