Exploiting the data-rate potential of MIMO channels: multi-stratum space-time coding

There is a high potential with respect to Shannon capacity in having a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channel. In this paper a new MIMO coding approach, called multi-stratum space-time coding (MSSTC) is presented The principle of MSSTC is to partition the data stream and to transmit the substreams on separate strata. The transmission on every stratum is based on space-time block coding (STBC) yielding full diversity. Orthogonal superposition of the strata results in independent transmit symbols and enables therefore a high data rate. Decoding may be done successively stratum by stratum yielding reasonable receiver complexity. The structural properties inherent in MSSTC make it a robust scheme for varying channel conditions. A Shannon capacity comparison to other MIMO schemes like V- and D-BLAST is presented showing the robustness of MSSTC in different environments.