Abstract
In the thesis, we consider communication systems over the multi-input multi-output (MIMO) block fading channels. We try to design super-orthogonal space-time trellis codes (SOSTTC), which can provide great error performance in slow fading channels, for MIMO block fading channels. The concept of constellation partition and (quasi-) regular property are used to analyze the code construction. Then, the practical encoder construction and line connection principle are proposed. We start from simple cases of 2-by-2 SOSTTC and then generalize our design to di®erent constellations and antennas while full-rate transmission is still main- tained. A systematic methodology to design powerful coding schemes for MIMO block fading channels is thus introduced. Compared with the space-time block code (STBC) only system, our codes can provide much better error performance because of large coding and diversity gains. We also compare our codes with STBC-bit interleaved coded modulation (BICM) schemes, which can provide extremely high diversity orders with large time delay. Although our codes cannot achieve higher diversity orders, we find that the error performance will be almost the same as those of STBC-BICM schemes at high signal-to-noise ratios and even better at low signal-to-noise ratios when the numbers of antennas and states increase.