Space-time overlays for convolutionally coded systems

We consider the design of space-time overlays to upgrade single-antenna wireless communication systems to accommodate multiple transmit antennas efficiently. We define the overlay constraint such that the signal transmitted from the first antenna in the upgraded system is the same as that in the single-antenna system. The signals transmitted from the remaining antennas are designed according to space-time coding principles to achieve full spatial diversity in quasi-static flat fading channels. For both binary phase-shift keying (BPSK) and quaternary phase-shift keying modulation systems, we develop an algebraic design framework that exploits the structure of existing single-dimensional convolutional codes in designing overlays that achieve full spatial diversity with minimum additional decoding complexity at the receiver. We also investigate a concatenated coding approach for a BPSK overlay design in which the inner code is an orthogonal block code. This approach is shown to yield near optimal asymptotic performance for quasi-static fading channels. We conclude by offering a brief discussion outlining the extension of the proposed techniques to time-varying block fading channels.