Space–time trellis code

Space–time trellis codes (STTCs) are a type of space–time code used in multiple-antenna wireless communications. This scheme transmits multiple, redundant copies of a trellis (or convolutional) code distributed over time and a number of antennas ('space'). These multiple, 'diverse' copies of the data are used by the receiver to attempt to reconstruct the actual transmitted data. For a STC to be used, there must necessarily be multiple transmit antennas, but only a single receive antennas is required; nevertheless multiple receive antennas are often used since the performance of the system is improved by so doing.

In contrast to space-time block codes (STBCs), they are able to provide both coding gain and diversity gain and have a better bit-error rate performance. However, being based on trellis codes, they are more complex than STBCs to encode and decode; they rely on a Viterbi decoder at the receiver where STBCs need only linear processing.

STTCs were discovered by Vahid Tarokh et. al in 1998.^[1][2]

References

1. ^ Vahid Tarokh, Nambi Seshadri, and A. R. Calderbank (March 1998). "Space–time codes for high data rate wireless communication: Performance analysis and code construction". IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. 44 (2): 744–765. doi:10.1109/18.661517.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
2. ^ Vahid Tarokh, Ayman Naguib, Nambi Seshadri and A. Robert Calderbank (February 1999). "Space–time codes for high data rate wireless communication: performance criteria in the presence of channel estimation errors, mobility, and multiple paths". IEEE Transactions on Communications. 47 (2): 199–207. doi:10.1109/26.752125.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)