Full-rate full-diversity STBC with constellation rotation

In this paper, a class of generalized quasi-orthogonal space-time block code is proposed to achieve full-rate transmission with low-complexity maximum likelihood decoding. Full transmit-diversity is achieved through the constellation rotation technique. Code construction criteria for this class of code are listed. Average 1/determinant criterion is proposed for optimizing the degree of constellation rotation in order to minimize the resultant frame error rate performance. Detailed code search and simulation studies for diversity levels of four and eight are conducted using QPSK modulation constellation. The results show that our proposed code structure can indeed produce many optimum full-rate full-diversity STBC codes with simplified maximum likelihood decoding.