Systematic Design of Unitary Space-Time Constellations


Bertrand M. Hochwald       Thomas L. Marzetta

Thomas J. Richardson       Wim Sweldens       Rüdiger Urbanke



Abstract: We propose a systematic method for creating constellations of unitary space-time signals for multiple-antenna communication links. Unitary space-time signals, which are orthonormal in time across the antennas, have been shown to be well-tailored to a Rayleigh fading channel where neither the transmitter nor the receiver knows the fading coefficients. The signals can achieve low probability of error by exploiting multiple antenna diversity at the transmitter. Our construction begins with the first signal in the constellation---an oblong complex-valued matrix whose columns are orthonormal---and systematically produces the remaining signals by succesively rotating this signal in a high-dimensional complex space. This construction easily produces large constellations of high-dimensional signals. We demonstrate its efficacy through examples involving one, two, and three transmitter antennas.

Status: IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, Vol. 46, No. 6, pp. 1962-1973.

Dates:
April 2000: Third revision.
March 2000: Second revision.
October 1999: We posted a revised version based on the referees comments.
January 1999: Submitted and posted on the Web.
September 1998: Written.

Download : PDF v3.0 (.pdf) (204K).

BiBTeX entry: 


   @article{constell98, 
     author = {B. Hochwald and T. Marzetta and T. Richardson and
               W. Sweldens and R. Urbanke}, 
     title = {Systematic Design of Unitary Space-Time Constellations},
     journal = {IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory},
     volume = 46,
     number = 6,
     pages = {1962-1973},
     year = {2000}
   }

Note: There is a follow-up paper called "Differential Unitary Space-Time Modulation".