Iterative joint decision feedback equalization and decoding for chip space-time block coding in WCDMA systems using long scrambling codes

Space-time block coding has emerged as a promising spatial transmit diversity scheme to reduce the fading effects of multipath channels and to increase system capacity, mainly due to its reduced decoding complexity and that channel state information is not required at the transmitter side. Recently, iterative processing has also attracted vast attention for improving system performance at low complexity cost. In this paper, we propose a new chip space-time block coding structure that employs iterative joint decision feedback equalization and decoding scheme for improving the performance of the downlink of a WCDMA system using long scrambling codes under frequency selective fading channels. Simulation results show that the presented schemes offer significant performance improvement against conventional disjoint receivers.