The last few years witnessed a dramatic increase in the demand on high-rate reliable wireless communications. In order to meet these new requirements, resorting to Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) techniques was inevitable as they may offer high-rate reliable wireless communications without any additional bandwidth. In the case where the transmitter does not have any prior knowledge about the channel state information, space-time coding techniques have proved to efficiently exploit the MIMO channel degrees of freedom while taking advantage of the maximum diversity gain. On the other hand, the ML decoding complexity of Space-Time Codes (STCs) generally increases exponentially with the rate which imposes an important challenge to their incorporation in recent communications standards. Recognizing the importance of the low-complexity criterion in the STC design for practical considerations, this thesis focuses on the design of new low-complexity Space-Time Block Codes (STBCs) where the transmitted code matrix can be expressed as a weighted linear combination of information symbols and we propose new codes that are decoded with a lower complexity than that of their rivals in the literature while providing better or slightly lower performance.

Les dernières années ont témoigné une augmentation spectaculaire de la demande des communications sans-fil à taux élevé. Afin de répondre à ces nouvelles exigences, le recours aux techniques Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) était inévitable, car ils sont capables d’assurer une transmission fiable des données à haut débit sans l’allocation de bande passante supplémentaire. Dans le cas où l’émetteur ne dispose pas d’information sur l’état du canal, les techniques de codage spatio-temporel se sont avérées d’exploiter efficacement les degrés de liberté du canal MIMO tout en profitant du gain de diversité maximal. D’autre part, généralement la complexité de décodage ML des codes espace-temps augmente de manière exponentielle avec le taux ce qui impose un défi important à leur incorporation dans les normes récentes de communications. Reconnaissant l’importance du critère de faible complexité dans la conception des codes espace-temps, nous nous concentrons dans cette thèse sur les codes espace-temps en bloc où la matrice du code peut être exprimée comme une combinaison linéaire des symboles réels transmis et nous proposons des nouveaux codes qui sont décodables avec une complexité inférieure à celle de leurs rivaux dans la littérature tout en fournissant des meilleurs performances ou des performances légèrement inférieures. / The last few years witnessed a dramatic increase in the demand on high-rate reliable wireless communications. In order to meet these new requirements, resorting to Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) techniques was inevitable as they may offer high-rate reliable wireless communications without any additional bandwidth. In the case where the transmitter does not have any prior knowledge about the channel state information, space-time coding techniques have proved to efficiently exploit the MIMO channel degrees of freedom while taking advantage of the maximum diversity gain. On the other hand, the ML decoding complexity of Space-Time Codes (STCs) generally increases exponentially with the rate which imposes an important challenge to their incorporation in recent communications standards. Recognizing the importance of the low-complexity criterion in the STC design for practical considerations, this thesis focuses on the design of new low-complexity Space-Time Block Codes (STBCs) where the transmitted code matrix can be expressed as a weighted linear combination of information symbols and we propose new codes that are decoded with a lower complexity than that of their rivals in the literature while providing better or slightly lower performance.