An 8 × 8 Quasi-Orthogonal STBC form for transmissions over eight or four antennas

An 8 × 8 two-symbol decodable quasi-orthogonal space-time block code (QO-STBC) is presented which can be transmitted across either 8 or 4 antennas with full rate and the same full diversity order. For the 8-transmit-antenna system, a new expression is developed to identify rotation angles that maximize the diversity (eigenvalue) product. In addition, it is shown that the previously proposed sum-eigenvalue maximization criterion for the design of rotation angles is not relevant/applicable and an alternative minimum eigenvalue maximization criterion is suggested. Finally, new optimal rotation angles are obtained by working directly with a pairwise-error-probability (PEP) upperbound expression. For 4-transmit-antenna systems and correlated channel fading conditions, the PEP-upper-bound is modified accordingly to take into account the channel correlation. Using the new PEP-upper-bound we obtain rotation angles that maximize the diversity product and find, contrary to previous results, that the optimized angles are independent of the correlation coefficient. Simulation studies initiated herein demonstrate the advantage of using the proposed codeword across 4 transmit antennas when compared with other 4 × 4 QO-STBC transmission schemes. For 8 transmit antennas, the studies compare the three selected rotation angle optimization criteria (diversity product, minimum eigenvalue, PEP-upper-bound).