A new full-rate full-diversity space-time block code with nonvanishing determinants and simplified maximum-likelihood decoding

A new 2 x 2 full-rate full-diversity linear dispersion space-time block code (STBC) is designed by augmenting the generator of the lattice of the Alamouti's orthogonal STBC and optimizing it according to the criterion of the maximal worst code-word. difference determinant. The proposed STBC is proved to satisfy the nonvanishing determinant property and, therefore, to achieve the optimal diversity-multiplexing gain (DMG) tradeoff, while offering a reduced computational complexity of maximum-likelihood (ML) decoding as compared to other existing full-rate STBCs. The performance of our new code is shown to be comparable to that of the best full-rate STBCs known so far.