Layered coding with non-coherent and coherent layers over fading channels

In this paper, we consider a novel layered coding approach with two layers. One of the two layers, denoted by the base-layer, can be received by any receiver even if it does not have reliable channel estimates. The other, refining-layer can only be received by any receiver that has channel state information. We propose signal constellations that allow the transmission of coherent and non-coherent information for the single-antenna transmitters. We derive upper bounds for the pairwise error probability for the coherent and non-coherent receivers and prove that our proposed signal constellations can achieve a diversity of order M for the 1 × M system, for both the coherent and non-coherent receivers.