Generalized Noncoherent Space-Time Block Codes from Quantum Error Correction

Abstract

This paper generalizes results in noncoherent space-time block code (STBC) design based on quantum error correction (QEC) to new antenna configurations. Previous work proposed QEC-inspired STBCs for antenna geometries where the number of transmit and receive antennas were equal and a power of two. In this work we extend these results by providing QEC-inspired STBCs applicable to all square antenna geometries and some rectangular geometries where the number of receive antennas is greater than the number of transmit antennas. We derive the maximum-likelihood decoding rule for this family of codes for the special case of Rayleigh fading with additive white Gaussian noise. We present Monte Carlo simulations of the performance of the codes in this environment for a three-antenna square geometry and a three-by-six rectangular geometry. We demonstrate competitive performance for these codes with respect to a popular noncoherent differential code.