Space-Time Spreading for MIMO CDMA-Based Systems over Fast-Fading Channels

In this paper, a transmit diversity scheme based on space-time spreading for code-division multiple-access (CDMA) systems in fast-fading channels is introduced. The proposed transmit diversity scheme employs orthogonal Walsh spreading codes to exploit the time diversity introduced by the channel, and hence achieves two-fold of the diversity order obtained using conventional space-time spreading schemes. A generalization of the proposed coding scheme to systems with different antenna configurations is also discussed. For slowly-fading channels, we show that the proposed transmit diversity scheme reduces to that of conventional transmit diversity schemes with no performance degradation. For nonorthogonal spreading codes, we propose a receiver structure that employs an interference cancellation scheme to compensate for signal interference. Our results show a large performance improvement when using such an interference cancellation scheme relative to the conventional matched filter receiver.