In this work, we investigate the performance of full-rate full-diversity space-time codes (FRFD-STCs) under practical conditions. In this thesis, we first discuss the performance of FRFD-STCs in the moderate SNR region. We also compare FRFD-STCs with spatial multiplexing, using the same transmission rate, for both un-coded and coded systems. The results show that spatial multiplexing is as good as FRFD-STCs with channel coding. Secondly, we investigate the issue of quantization, i.e. the effect of the quantization error in the space-time encoding matrix. Our analysis and results show that the performance loss is negligible. Finally, we propose two receiver structures in the presence of imperfect channel state information (CSI). The two receivers use the VEM module as the channel estimator and MIMO detector respectively. Both receivers are of low complexity, and have better performance than the methods proposed previously.

In this work, we investigate the performance of full-rate full-diversity space-time codes (FRFD-STCs) under practical conditions. In this thesis, we first discuss the performance of FRFD-STCs in the moderate SNR region. We also compare FRFD-STCs with spatial multiplexing, using the same transmission rate, for both un-coded and coded systems. The results show that spatial multiplexing is as good as FRFD-STCs with channel coding. Secondly, we investigate the issue of quantization, i.e. the effect of the quantization error in the space-time encoding matrix. Our analysis and results show that the performance loss is negligible. Finally, we propose two receiver structures in the presence of imperfect channel state information (CSI). The two receivers use the VEM module as the channel estimator and MIMO detector respectively. Both receivers are of low complexity, and have better performance than the methods proposed previously.