Asymptotic performance of space-frequency codes over broadband channels

We show that when the number of receive antennas is large, the Euclidean distance among codewords dominates the performance of space-frequency codes, the same result as for space-time codes. Therefore, in the presence of a large number of receive antennas, space-frequency codes can be optimized by using the Euclidean-distance criterion valid for additive white Gaussian noise channels. Simulation results show that this conclusion is also valid when the number of antennas is small.