TEN BRINK LAYOUT 8/3/06 1:27 PM Page 18
A D VA N C E S I N S M A RT A N T E N N A S
CODING OVER SPACE AND TIME FOR
WIRELESS SYSTEMS
STEPHAN TEN BRINK, REALTEK SEMICONDUCTOR CORP.
ABSTRACT
Source
In wireless communications, channel coding
is used to combat impairments such as noise or
fading. Redundant information is added at the
ode transmitter, to enable reliable detection and
de Channel
de encoder
Chann
decoding of the message at the receiver. With
b the advent of multiple-antenna techniques, cod-
ing for the wireless channel has become an
attractive topic of research. Several original
erleaver Π schemes have been devised over the past decade
that benefit particularly well from the added
-QAM spatial dimension: clever space-time diversity
and/or
Channel mappings, coined “space-time coding,” increase
apper the reliability of the wireless link, while “spatial
and/or mapper
Channmultiplexing” and its corresponding demultiplex-
on
ing and detection algorithms achieve high data
With the advent of rates at unprecedented spectral efficiencies. The
combination of channel coding with numerous
multiple-antenna variations and mixtures of the above poses inter-
techniques, coding esting design challenges. In this article we,
admittedly, take a more channel-coding-centric
for the wireless view of a wireless communication link, and out-
line the current state of the art as well as future
channel has become trends in coding over space and time.
an attractive topic of
INTRODUCTION
research. Several Channel coding, sometimes also referred to as
original schemes error control coding, is an essential requirement
for reliable information transmission in any digital
have been devised communication system. A channel encoder maps
source information bit sequences into coded bit
over the past decade sequences (codewords) that are further modulat-
ed and transmitted over the communication chan-
that benefit nel. The code rate R is the ratio of information
sequence length K and actually transmitted code-
particularly well from word length N. Typical values range from 1/6…1/3
the added spatial for deep space applications, over 1/3…3/4 for
mobile communications, up to 0.86…0.93 for
dimension. optical channels with almost no redundant infor-
mation being added. Shannon’s famous channel
coding theorem [1] states that reliable (i.e., error-
free) communication is possible for long codes
provided that the code rate does not exceed the
capacity of the channel. The statistical properties
of the channel determine its capacity. Coding the-
ory is about finding “good” codes, that is, codes
of reasonable complexity that can approach the
capacity limit closely. While this challenge has
been met for simple cases like the additive white
18 1536-1284/06/$20.00 © 2006 IEEE
Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel in the power-
limited regime, coding for the wireless channel, in
particular for the multiple-input multiple-output
(MIMO) channel at high spectral efficiency, is
still an active area of research.
The time-varying nature of the wireless chan-
nel requires that we exploit the concept of diver-
sity: An information bit entering the channel
encoder should be mapped into all dimensions
available (e.g., time, frequency, and space) to
achieve maximal robustness against fades and
bursts of interference. Through the channel code,
one information bit is “diffused” into many coded
bits; through a space-time code, one such coded
bit is further spread over several modulation
symbols, which in turn are transmitted over sepa-
rate antennas and thus undergo different fades.
There are a number of ways to achieve this; and
one of the most interesting aspects is where and
how to add redundancy to get the most in return.
This article is organized as follows. We first
introduce capacity limits and spectrally efficient
modulation, followed by a brief overview of pop-
ular channel coding schemes. We then discuss
different multiple-antenna techniques in view of
channel coding, and illustrate these concepts for
the case of the wireless local area network
(WLAN) system IEEE 802.11n [2], which pro-
vides a rich example of space-time processing
pertaining to the physical layer. We conclude by
providing an outlook on some future develop-
ments in the field.
CODING FOR RELIABLE COMMUNICATION
The AWGN channel has become for coding and
information theory what the fruit fly is for genet-
ic research: Its simplicity makes it accessible to
analytic study, yet it models many real-world
channels, like noise in cable transmission or the
deep space channel, accurately enough to derive
meaningful results, such as coding schemes.
Shannon showed that a channel can be character-
ized by a single parameter, the capacity C, which,
for a complex-valued AWGN channel Y = X +
N writes as C = log2(1 + Es/N0). The term Es/N0
denotes the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) per chan-
nel symbol, with Es being the power of X and N0
the power of N. Before Shannon’s concept of
channel capacity, engineers assumed that to
achieve reliable communication one has to
IEEE Wireless Communications • August 2006
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6 6

64-QAM
64-QAM

5 5

ayleigh)
Unattainable

it (R
region

Spectral efficiency (bandpass-signal) (b/s/Hz)

N)
capacity lim

WG
N)
16-QAM 16-QAM

WG

it (A
4 4
Channel capacity C (bits)

it (A

y li m
lim

acit
MIMO 4x4
y
acit

Cap
Cap

64-QAM
3 3 turbo

16-QAM
QPSK limit turbo QPSK
2 2
Uncoded Uncoded

R = 1/2
convolutional
Repetition code code Repetition code
R = 1/2 R = 1/2
1 1

1/3 8 Memory 2 1/3

QPSK
turbo
1/8 1/8
0 0
-4 0 4 8 12 16 20 24 -2 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18
Es/N0 (dB) Eb/N0 (dB)

■ Figure 1. Capacity, spectral efficiency, and coding realizations.

increase the transmit power Es (i.e., increase the

SNR) or repeat the message. There seemed to be which a bit error rate (BER) of 10–5 is achieved.
an unavoidable trade-off between reliability and Obviously, repetition coding allows us to operate
the information rate of the transmission. at lower SNR, Es/N0. However, plotting the spec-
Shannon proved this assumption to be wrong. tral efficiency chart (Fig. 1, right) using the rate-
Instead, arbitrarily reliable communication is normalized SNR (per information bit) Eb/N0 =
possible as long as the information rate R ⋅ M is (Es/N0)/(RM) reveals that a repetition code does
smaller than the capacity C of the channel. R not bring us any closer to capacity. There is no
stands for the code rate, and M for the number coding gain; that is, there is no improvement in
of coded bits conveyed per channel use. In other power efficiency with respect to an uncoded sys-
words, the noise on the channel does not com- tem. Moreover, we lose spectral efficiency. We
promise the quality of the transmission, as long should therefore use repetition coding carefully.
as R ⋅ M < C is fulfilled. The way to get close to
capacity is channel coding, which needs to add POWER-LIMITED REGIME
just enough redundancy to the transmitted mes- At low SNR or low spectral efficiency, the trans-
sage to satisfy the above condition. mit power is the limited resource. In wireless
The left chart in Fig. 1 shows the Gaussian communications the deep space channel and
capacity limit and several information limits for ultrawideband channel (3.1–10.6 GHz) fall into
modulation schemes with a finite number of this category. Several useful insights can be gained
amplitude levels (i.e., that convey a maximal from the figure: Uncoded communication is more
number of M bits per channel use). There are than 9 dB away from the capacity limit at a BER
several reasons that the maximal constellation of 10–5, leaving plenty of room for improvement
size is limited in a practical system implementa- through coding. Binary antipodal modulation
tion: stringent constraints on transmit amplifier ± Es
linearity, finite digital-to-analog/analog-to-digital
converter (DAC/ADC) resolution, or restrictions (binary phase shift keying, BPSK, per real-dimen-
in detection complexity, to mention just a few. sion, i.e., quadrature phase shift keying, QPSK,
The effect of repeating symbols is also shown in over bandpass channels) thus, binary coding is
the figure, with a marker plotted at the SNR at sufficient to get cand lose to the limit. One sym-

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bol on the channel corresponds to one coded bit
The choice of the (per real dimension). The detection at the receiv-
er is trivial, using a matched filter that directly
right channel feeds its soft information output to the outer
channel decoder. The ultimate Shannon limit is at
interface, i.e., the E b/N 0 = –1.59 dB, and no matter how low of a
coding rate we use, we will not be able to achieve
mapping of binary reliable communication below that Eb/N0. For ref-
codes to the erence, the performance of several coding
schemes is plotted at a BER of 10–5. Binary con-
communication volutional codes are characterized by the memory
of the code; increasing the memory from 2 to 8,
channel, and the as shown in the figure, improves the coding gain,
but the decoder complexity grows exponentially.
corresponding With the discovery of turbo codes [3] in 1993 it
became possible to approach the AWGN capacity
demapping strategy very closely by concatenating simple component
at the receiver, codes and using an iterative decoding strategy.
is a central BANDWIDTH-LIMITED REGIME
At high SNR or high spectral efficiency, the
question in digital bandwidth is the precious resource, as usually is
the case in wireless cellular systems. For the
communications, power-limited case, we were able to simply map
the binary coded sequence to antipodal signals.
even more so when Now, to achieve higher spectral efficiency per
communicating using transmitted symbol we need to use a larger signal
alphabet, based on either nonbinary codes or
multiple antennas. grouping several coded bits of a binary code into
one symbol on the channel. Typically, using bina-
ry codes is the preferred way, as several efficient
hardware architectures for encoding and decod-
ing are readily available. With multi-amplitude
modulation like pulse amplitude modulation
(PAM) for real and quadrature amplitude modu-
lation (QAM) for complex (bandpass) signals, we
can communicate M b/symbol using 2M/2 ampli-
tude levels per real dimension (“spectrally effi-
cient modulation”). The mapping of the binary
code to the multi-signal-level channel input is not
straightforward, and several approaches have
been devised, such as trellis-coded modulation
(TCM), multilevel coding (MLC), and bit-inter-
leaved coded modulation (BICM) [4, references
therein]. While demapping was trivial for the
BPSK/QPSK case, there might be several ways of
demapping the signal at the receiver when using
multiple amplitude levels, with different complex-
ity/performance trade-offs. The choice of the
right channel interface (i.e., the mapping of binary
codes to the communication channel) and the
corresponding demapping strategy (also referred
to as detection) at the receiver is a central ques-
tion in digital communications, even more so
when communicating using multiple antennas.
Trellis-Coded Modulation — In TCM, channel coding
and modulation are viewed as a single entity, with
dedicated bit labelings and encoders that generate
multilevel signals, separating codewords in
Euclidean space rather than in Hamming space as
is most relevant for binary antipodal (BPSK) trans-
mission. The added redundancy simply expands
the constellation size to achieve coding gain; thus,
spectral efficiency is increased at no bandwidth
expansion. TCM has turned out to be a highly suc-
cessful technique, and is widely used in voiceband
modem standards ITU-T V.32–V.34. It is consid-
ered to be the first successful application of chan-
nel coding to spectrally efficient modulation.
20
Multilevel Coding — In MLC the QAM symbol
channel is partitioned into M parallel bit chan-
nels, implicitly defined by the bit labeling of the
2M–QAM constellation. For each bit channel, a
maximal information rate can be derived; more-
over, it can be shown that the sum of the indi-
vidual information rates is equal to the maximal
information rate of the corresponding QAM
channel. Thus, channel coding is reduced to cod-
ing over M binary channels with appropriately
chosen code rates. This strategy can approach
capacity; however, the handling of different cod-
ing rates appears to be inconvenient in practice.
Bit-Interleaved Coded Modulation — Figure 2 depicts
a communication link using BICM. The output
of a single channel encoder is bit-interleaved and
mapped onto a QAM constellation. The bit inter-
leaving can be thought of as performing an aver-
aging over different bit channels defined by the
constellation labeling, resulting in a single effec-
tive information rate. Each codeword experiences
a maximal number of possible states of the chan-
nel, approaching the desirable case of an ergodic
channel, which ensures robust performance. It
can be shown that BICM can operate close to
the capacity limit provided that Gray labeling is
used. With Gray labeling, neighboring constella-
tion points differ by only one binary digit. Thanks
to the bit interleaver, BICM performs quite well
over fading channels, which makes it a popular
choice for wireless communications. In fact, most
cellular systems as well as satellite and wireless
networking systems employ BICM.
All of the above modulation strategies can be
combined with MIMO techniques. As we will
see, BICM in particular is very easy to extend to
the MIMO channel. A first hint of the potential
capacity increase of communicating using multi-
ple antennas (four transmit and receive anten-
nas) is given in Fig. 1.
ADAPTIVE MODULATION AND RATE TABLE
With impairments such as fading, multiuser
interference, and bursts of noise, the wireless
communication channel is a much more chal-
lenging transmission medium than cable or the
idealized AWGN channel. To account for the
time- and location-varying behavior of the wire-
less channel, many wireless systems support rate
control by adaptive modulation — the most sim-
ple form of feedback. A modulation/coding
scheme table (MCS, also referred to as rate
table) defines different combinations of code
rate and modulation rate, with different SNR
requirements. Depending on the current channel
condition, as reported back from the receiver,
the transmitter chooses the appropriate MCS
entry. From Fig. 1 we can infer a few guidelines
for the design of an MCS table:
• For coding rates of less than about 3/4, the
QAM input-constrained mutual information
limit incurs hardly any loss compared to the
capacity limit.
• A high modulation rate (e.g., 64-QAM) should
not be used in combination with a low coding
rate (e.g., rate 1/3), as this would unnecessari-
ly increase the complexity of the detection, as
well as put more demanding constraints on
IEEE Wireless Communications • August 2006
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Discovered by
Source Sink P. Elias in 1954,
convolutional codes
Video decoder
Convolutional code
or turbo code Channel Channel or iterative turbo became the
encoder decoder decoder or iterative
or LDPC code Channel as seen
by channel code
LDPC decoder workhorses of
channel coding
Iterative detection
Π–1
Bit interleaver Π Π and decoding for wireless
QAM or vector-QAM
and/or
QAM communications:
Channel Channel with ZF, MMSE,
space/time mapper
and/or mapper demapper APP SMX and/or
space/time-combiner
they operate from
Channel as seen
subset selection by channel interface and/or subset
selection and/or deep space, increase
MRC
the reliability of
Matrix cellular radio,
channel +
H and allow us to
Additive connect to the
NT NR noise
Internet through
■ Figure 2. Communication link with channel coding and different channel interfaces.
WLAN/WPAN.
RF linearity than actually required for com- most prominent results of this effort are the
munication at the respective information rate. codes discovered by I. S. Reed and G. Solomon,
In WLAN IEEE 802.11a, which is a single-anten- with the corresponding algebraic decoding algo-
na system, the MCS table has only eight entries rithm by E. R. Berlekamp and J. L. Massey.
[5]. Obviously, with the inclusion of MIMO tech- Most properties of linear block codes were well
niques, the MCS table has to grow with the num- understood at the beginning of the 1970s.
ber of different antenna modes possible. And
indeed, the high-rate successor system 802.11n [2], CONVOLUTIONAL CODES
which uses MIMO techniques, has more than 100 Discovered by P. Elias in 1954, convolutional
entries, varying from simple non-MIMO/single- codes became the workhorses of channel coding
antenna modes to four spatial streams (transmit for wireless communications: they operate from
antennas), even supporting a different modulation deep space, increase the reliability of cellular
rate per antenna — a complexity increase that has radio — Global System for Mobile Communica-
to be taken into account in system design. tions (GSM), code-division multiple access
(CDMA), Universal Mobile Telecommunicaitons
System (UMTS) — and allow us to connect to
CHANNEL CODES AND THEIR DECODERS the internet through WLAN/WPAN. The encoder
LINEAR BLOCK CODES is a simple shift register with ν memory elements.
The optimal maximum likelihood decoding algo-
Binary linear block codes were the first error rithm was introduced by A. Viterbi in 1967, using
correcting codes, introduced by R. W. Hamming 2ν states per information bit, efficiently organized
in 1950 to improve the reliability of electrome- in a trellis structure. In view of the fact that
chanical computing machines [6]. They can be decoding of linear block codes was dominated by
described by a generator matrix G of dimension hard decision decoding at that time, the availabili-
K × N having binary entries, characterizing the ty of low-complexity soft-input decoding using the
encoding process, or a parity check matrix H of Viterbi algorithm did mean a big step forward.
dimension (K – N) × N, more naturally repre- With the new soft decoding paradigm, no hard
senting the decoding process. A codeword vector decisions need to be made after the demapper,
c is generated by c = uG, and for all codewords but soft values are passed on to the decoder,
c we have HcT = 0, and thus GHT = 0. A linear improving performance by 2–3 dB. The Viterbi
block code is characterized by the minimum algorithm offers an excellent performance/com-
Hamming distance d min, which corresponds to plexity trade-off when no close-to-capacity perfor-
the minimum number of differing digits between mance is required. The performance can be
any two codewords. Large d min means good improved by increasing the memory of the code;
asymptotic error correcting performance, and however, the decoding complexity grows exponen-
the early coding research of the 1950s and ’60s tially in the memory ν, making codes with big
almost exclusively focused on finding codes with memory unattractive for implementation. Table 1
large dmin. Linear block codes are based on sim- provides some further properties of convolutional
ple algebraic descriptions, lending themselves to codes and compares them to iteratively decodable
algebraic hard decision decoding. One of the codes, discussed in the following.

IEEE Wireless Communications • August 2006 21

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ITERATIVE DECODING OF other decoder by their a posteriori decoding

CONCATENATED CODES
Code concatenation is a way to construct long
powerful codes that can achieve big coding gains
while keeping the decoding complexity manage-
able. It was first introduced by D. Forney in
1966 for the case of serially concatenated codes
(SCCs), with an “inner” and an “outer” code
used in cascade. Inner and outer codes are
decoded separately, resulting in much lower
complexity than maximum likelihood decoding
of the entire concatenated code. The discovery
of parallel concatenated codes (PCCs) and the
corresponding iterative “turbo” decoding algo-
rithm by C. Berrou et al. [3] in 1993 was the
breakthrough of this technique; it started a new
era in error control coding. The component
decoders work individually on the received
noise-corrupted channel data; with each itera-
tion, they exchange reliability information and
update the a priori knowledge of the respective
result — a mechanism akin to a turbo engine.
Parallel Concatenated Codes — The encoder for paral-
lel concatenated turbo codes uses two or more
convolutional codes of small memory, which are
connected through a (pseudo-)random inter-
leaver. The coded bit output of each encoder is
multiplexed together with the information bit,
comprising the codeword sent. Optimal decoding
can be achieved by maximum likelihood decoding
of the concatenated code. However, due to the
random interleaver, the code loses its simple
structure, and the resulting trellis representation
would have a prohibitively large number of states.
An easy way out is to use iterative decoding,
which is a suboptimal decoding strategy but much
less complex. Each component code is decoded
separately using a soft output decoder (APP or
BCJR decoding algorithm, see [7] for further ref-
erences). Soft reliability (extrinsic) information is
exchanged between the component decoders.

Turbo codes (parallel, serial Low-density parity-check codes and

Convolutional codes
concatenation) repeat-accumulate codes

1953 P. Elias 1966 D. Forney (concatenated coding)

1962 R. G. Gallagher
Discovered 1967 A. Viterbi (efficient 1993 C. Berrou, A. Glavieux (turbo
Rediscovered 1995
decoding) code, iterative decoder)

Compact, by generator Compact, by generator polynomials, Sparse parity-check matrix (compact nota-
Code definition
polynomials interleaving rule tion possible through a “protograph”)

Encoder Linear (two shift registers, one

Linear (shift register) Quadratic (repeat-accumulate codes; linear)
complexity interleaver)

Decoder
Linear (BCJR algorithm), iterative
complexity over Linear (Viterbi algorithm) Linear (message passing), iterative decoding
decoding
message length

Simple puncturing of
Different code
single mother code using
rates
optimized patterns
Optimized patterns, or simple pseudo- Simple puncturing results in performance
random puncturing achieves good degradation; best complete parity-check
performance matrix redesign

Less flexible; simple shortening, repetition

Different block Flexible, any length, requires change
Very flexible, any length may result in performance degradation;
length of interleaver
best: complete parity-check matrix redesign

Efficient, serial; or parallel Efficient, serial; or parallel through

Hardware Can be fully parallelized; most flexible
through windowing and windowing and overlapped
implementation area/clock rate trade-off
overlapped processing processing

AWGN 3 dB away from capacity < 1 dB from capacity for big block < 1 dB from capacity for big block lengths
performance for reasonable complexity lengths (104 or higher) (104 or higher)

Iterative Possible; LDPC code can be tuned to match

detection and Possible Possible detector behavior for improved
decoding performance

Convergence Not applicable Typically fast, eight iterations Typically more than 12 iterations

Ubiquitous for voice, data;

Popular for data communications; 3G
Real world examples include GSM,
cellular (UMTS, CDMA2000), satellite DVB-S2, WLAN 802.11n, WiMAX 802.16e,
wireless UMTS, IS-95, CDMA2000,
(DVB-RCS/RCT, Inmarsat, Eutelsat), next deep space CCSDS standard
applications DAB, DVB, WLAN 802.11,
deep space CCSDS
WPAN UWB, …

■ Table 1. Properties of channel codes for wireless communications.

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Turbo codes exhibit excellent error correction

capabilities, and allow operating close to the Iterative decoder
capacity limits for medium error probabilities, dv = 2
provided that large interleavers are used. + dc = 3

+ +
Serially Concatenated Codes — The classic serially con-
catenated code is composed of an inner convolu- +
tional code and an outer Reed-Solomon code, From +
connected by an interleaver. The interleaver channel +
breaks up bursts of errors at the Viterbi decoder (or demapper)
output, and the Reed-Solomon decoder tries to +
+
clean up any remaining errors. With the success of
+
iterative decoding of parallel concatenated codes,
similar schemes using inner and outer convolu- + +
tional codes were investigated. It quickly became
clear that many components in a digital communi- + dc = 4
cation system can be thought of as serial concate- dv = 1 Edge interleaving
nations, including processing elements such as
equalizers for intersymbol interference channels, N = 8 variable nodes N – K = 4 check nodes
or multiuser detectors. Using an appropriate itera- (repetition codes) (parity check codes)
tive decoding algorithm at the receiver (e.g., iter-
ating over an equalizer and a channel decoder) Parity check matrix
allows further performance improvement. 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 0

LOW-DENSITY PARITY-CHECK CODES
A low-density parity-check (LDPC) code [8, ref-
erences therein] is a linear block code described
by a parity-check matrix that is sparse (i.e., has
only a few entries set to one). Apart from special
subclasses, the code itself does not quite qualify
as a concatenated code. However, due to the
sparseness of the parity-check matrix, LDPC
codes can be decoded efficiently using iterative
decoding, with a structure reminiscent of an iter-
ative decoder for serially concatenated codes. A
toy example for K = 4 is shown in Fig. 3. An
inner variable node decoder comprising N vari-
able nodes (which can be thought of decoders
for repetition codes) and an outer single parity-
check node decoder performing N – K parity
checks are connected through an edge inter-
leaver, exchanging soft reliability (extrinsic)
information to recover the transmitted message.
Code design is done by choosing variable node
and check node degree distributions (i.e., a mix-
ture of repetition code rates and single parity-
check code rates) governing the convergence of
the iterative decoder. This can be accomplished
using density evolution [8] or extrinsic informa-
tion transfer (EXIT) charts [12]. For a regular
LDPC code with variable node degree dν, corre-
sponding to a repetition code of rate 1/d ν, and
check node degree dc, corresponding to a single
parity-check code of rate (dc – 1)/dc, the parity-
check matrix H has d ν ones per column and d c
ones in each row. For an irregular LDPC code,
the values for dν and dc follow a certain distribu-
tion obtained from code design to optimize the
convergence behavior of the iterative decoder.
Protograph Notation — The many degrees of free-
dom in designing LDPC codes, as well as a flexi-
ble silicon-area vs. clock-frequency trade-off are
amongst the main reasons why they have attract-
ed a lot of interest in standardization groups
over the past few years. An LDPC decoder can
be fully parallelized in hardware. However, the
description by a parity-check matrix H is so gen-
0 1 0 1 1 1 0 0
H(N–K)×N =
1 1 0 0 0 1 1 0
0 0 1 1 0 0 1 1
Concatenated encoder
K
+ +
K + + N–K
+ +
+ +
■ Figure 3. Decoder of low-density parity-check (LDPC) code, parity-check
matrix, and encoder for repeat-accumulate (RA) codes, a subclass of LDPC
codes with linear encoding complexity.
eral that it poses a serious design burden for
implementation with respect to interconnection
network routing and memory size. Luckily, there
are plenty of parity-check matrices to choose
from that describe codes with similar properties
— so we can be picky, and select structures that
simplify implementation while hardly degrading
performance. For a protograph notation, the par-
ity-check matrix H is composed of square matri-
ces of dimension P × P. A typical value for P is
50. Each square matrix is either a “permutation
matrix” Ps, which is obtained from the identity
matrix by s consecutive cyclic shifts, or a null
matrix. Obviously, the corresponding protograph
matrix H p provides a P-times more compact
notation: For each permutation matrix only the
cyclic shift index s, with s = 0, …, P – 1, needs
to be stored. Dedicated hardware architectures
have been developed that can efficiently exploit
the parallelism inherent to the protograph struc-
ture. An iterative decoding schedule that walks
along the rows or columns of Hp, while decoding
P single parity check codes or repetition codes in
parallel, was found to be particularly convenient.
This is sometimes referred to as “layered decod-

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The transmission ing.” Still, the definition of LDPC codes requires
much more ink and paper than convolutional
in wireless codes or turbo codes, as each code rate and
block length require their own separate proto-
communication graph matrix definition.
systems is typically Repeat-Accumulate Codes — The encoding operation
of LDPC codes c = uG is of quadratic complexi-
organized in packets, ty, as G is not sparse. Repeat-accumulate (RA)
with a training codes are a special subclass of LDPC codes with
linear encoding complexity. Their parity-check
sequence at the matrix has a section with lower staircase structure,
which allows us to write the encoder as a concate-
beginning of the nation of an outer repetition code stage, an edge
interleaver, a parity-check stage, and an inner
packet, to allow for accumulator (differential encoder). It is, thus, not
surprising that most if not all LDPC codes that
channel estimation have been presented in standards so far are, in
and coherent fact, repeat-accumulate codes. Note that the
example in Fig. 3 is a repeat-accumulate code.
detection at The field of channel coding has evolved over
more than 50 years, since the initial works of
the receiver. Shannon and Hamming. Powerful codes have
been found that can approach the capacity limits
closely, and several viable methods of connecting
binary codes with spectrally efficient modulation
are at the designer’s disposal. All we need to do
in the subsequent sections is to apply these tech-
niques to the multiple antenna channel.
MULTIPLE ANTENNA TECHNIQUES
The transmission in wireless communication sys-
tems is typically organized in packets, with a train-
ing sequence (preamble) at the beginning of the
packet, to allow for channel estimation and coher-
ent detection at the receiver. When the transmit-
ter is unaware of the channel and the receiver
does not feed back detailed phase and magnitude
information, we speak of “open loop” transmis-
sion which is considered in the remainder of this
section. It is a good match for the wireless MIMO
channel which is time-varying, and the rate of
feeding back channel information might be high.
Multiple antennas can be used at the trans-
mitter, the receiver, or at both ends of a wireless
communication link. There are different modes
of operation possible, and which is preferred
depends on SNR, channel conditions, and con-
straints imposed on the system complexity.
Examples of open loop MIMO techniques
include antenna subset selection, maximum ratio
combining (MRC), spatial multiplexing (SMX),
cyclic delay diversity (CDD), and space-time
block coding (STBC).
ANTENNA SUBSET SELECTION
A rather inexpensive method for benefiting from
multiple antennas is to probe the power of all
NR receive antennas during preamble reception,
and select the antenna that maximizes the
received power for the remainder of the packet.
Only simple radio frequency (RF) switches are
required, and only one rather than NR downcon-
version chains (LNA, mixer, ADC stage), thus
reducing cost significantly. Instead of one, a sub-
set of NR′ < NR receive antennas can be selected
and used in combination with other methods of
MIMO communications. Antenna subset selec-
tion can also be applied at the transmit side, say,
24
based on a simple feedback signal from the
receiver, indicating those antennas that con-
tribute most to the received signal. Selecting one
or a subset of transmit/receive antennas does not
achieve gains over a multiple antenna AWGN
test channel. On fading channels, however, the
typical gains range from 1 to 3 dB.
MAXIMUM RATIO COMBINING
For 1 × NR-situations, maximum ratio combining
(MRC) takes the NR received signals and performs
a coherent superposition, corresponding to optimal
maximum likelihood detection. The rationale
behind MRC is that the NR signals fade differently,
and the probability of all being in a deep fade
becomes smaller with increasing number of receive
antennas. MRC requires full RF chains, with LNA,
mixer, and ADC stage. The combination of the
received signals is done in digital baseband, using
separate channel estimation for the respective sig-
nal paths, resulting in coherent superposition of
wanted signal, and noncoherent superposition of
the unwanted noise components. For NR = 2, the
gain on an AWGN test channel is 3 dB, going up
to about 5 to 7 dB on fading channels.
SPATIAL MULTIPLEXING
In spatial multiplexing (SMX) [9–11], different
information is transmitted simultaneously over
N T transmit antennas, increasing the data rate
at short distance, providing high spectral effi-
ciency similar to increasing the constellation
size, but without suffering from a power penal-
ty. Spatial multiplexing is sometimes also
referred to as direct transmission or simply
MIMO. The receiver has to decouple the N T
spatial streams to recover the transmitted infor-
mation. Optimal detection tends to be complex,
and several suboptimal low-complexity detec-
tors have been devised, ranging from simple
zero forcing to complex soft a posteriori proba-
bility (APP) detection.
The received signal can be written as y = Hs +
n with s being the transmitted constellation vector
of NT QAM symbols, H being the NR × NT matrix
of channel coefficients, and n the NR × 1 vector of
additive Gaussian noise. Spatial multiplexing can
be considered a vector-QAM, forming a com-
pound constellation symbol of 2M⋅NT signal points,
conveying information of M ⋅ NT b/channel use
over a matrix channel. In the following we consid-
er suboptimal low-complexity spatial demappers
that decouple the output from the matrix channel
into individual spatial streams, which in turn are
further separated into multiple soft-bitstreams to
be sent to the outer channel decoder.
Linear Front-Ends — Zero forcing (ZF) is a low-
complexity method to separate the MIMO signal
into spatial streams by computing sest = Wy, with
“pseudo inverse” W = (H H H) –1 H H (N T × N R
matrix), and HH denoting the complex conjugate
transpose (hermitian) of H. The vector estimate
sest of the transmitted constellation vector can be
used to extract the soft bit metrics for the outer
channel decoder. The noise enhancement at low
SNR can be reduced by using minimum mean
squared error (MMSE) estimation, taking into
account both noise and interference power. This
detector type can be extended to accept a priori
IEEE Wireless Communications • August 2006
TEN BRINK LAYOUT 8/3/06 1:27 PM Page 25
values fed back from the outer channel decoder,
which allows iterative detection and decoding to
be performed to regain some of the performance
losses incurred compared to the optimal detector.
Successive Cancellation — A refinement of the
above detector is successive cancellation, starting
with the strongest spatial stream and successively
subtracting out one by one until all spatial
streams are separated. The hard decision perfor-
mance after the cancellation detector tends to be
better than that of plain ZF/MMSE detection.
However, error propagation due to successive
cancellation limits the quality of the soft output.
Maximum Likelihood and APP Detection — The maxi-
mum likelihood detector (MLD) enumerates
through all 2M⋅NT hypotheses on the transmitted
constellation vector ^ s , and picks the vector ^
s that
^ 2
minimizes the Euclidean distance ||y – Hs || .
MLD minimizes the probability of making a vector
error, and just produces hard decisions, which is
not good for combining it with outer channel
decoding. The APP detector generates soft relia-
bility values on the received constellation bits by
taking all competing hypotheses into account,
computing a ratio for a 1- vs. a 0-hypothesis per
constellation bit. The APP detector minimizes the
probability of making a bit error, and produces
soft outputs, the true a posteriori log-likelihood
ratio values, which can be further processed by an
outer channel decoder. It shows the best perfor-
mance of all detectors when combined with itera-
tive detection and decoding, as it readily accepts a
priori information for closing the turbo loop.
However, applicability of the MLD or APP detec-
tor suffers from an exponential complexity
increase in the number of transmitted bits (i.e.,
the QAM constellation size M and the number of
transmit antennas NT). The sphere decoder is a
lower-complexity alternative; it only considers the
most relevant hypotheses using a tree-search algo-
rithm, bounded by a radius constraint around an
initial vector estimate. Soft outputs are computed
by APP detection over all relevant candidate vec-
tors that fulfill the radius constraint. The number
of search steps depends on the SNR and the par-
ticular instantiation of the channel matrix H,
which is challenging for hardware implementation.
Combination with Channel Coding — Spatial multi-
plexing can be interpreted as a vector extension
of BICM, where the bit-interleaved coded
sequence is mapped onto a vector of N T QAM
symbols, rather than a single QAM constella-
tion. The channel interface at the receiver
(detector) only sees a fraction of the transmit-
ted message at a time; thus, its role should
merely be to convey soft reliability information
to the outer channel decoder. The channel
decoder sees the entire sequence, and should
make the final decisions on the transmitted
message. A hard decision after the channel
interface, as done in MLD, would throw away
precious information that could help the
decoder to do a better job. It is therefore a
good strategy to concentrate all redundancy of
the system into a single outer channel code.
Another approach is to split up the redundancy
between outer channel code and an inner space-
IEEE Wireless Communications • August 2006
time code. This can offer diversity benefits
paired with ease of detection when there are
The extrinsic
more transmit than receive antennas; this will information is
become apparent as we continue our discussion.
Typically, horizontal encoding is done with a deinterleaved to
specific detection scheme in mind. For each
transmit antenna, a separate coded bit stream is become the a priori
generated by a dedicated channel encoder. Dif-
ferent channel coding and modulation rates can input to the outer
be used, and the successive cancellation detector
can benefit from the outer channel decoding,
soft in/soft out
providing more reliable decisions than those decoder which
right after the detector; however, the latency
might be high. In vertical encoding, the output of calculates outer
a single channel encoder is bit-interleaved and
distributed among the transmit antennas; this extrinsic information.
appears to be the best method for capturing all
spatial diversity offered by the channel, benefit- One iteration is
ing from deeper interleaving across spatial sub- completed by
channels. A larger interleaver is also useful for
concatenated coding and iterative decoding, re-interleaving the
which requires a sequence length of several
thousand bits to perform well. outer extrinsic
Iterative Processing — The channel code and information, to
MIMO mapper with matrix channel H can be
interpreted as a serially concatenated coding become the a priori
scheme. The outer encoder forwards coded bits
through the bit interleaver to the inner vector
knowledge to the
QAM mapping; the MIMO channel implicitly inner detector.
performs a block encoding with matrix H, intro-
ducing memory, thus connecting the bits of the
vector constellation across multiple transmit
antennas. Optimal decoding at the receiver cor-
responds to jointly detecting the MIMO constel-
lation and decoding the outer code, which is
prohibitively complex. Thanks to the bit inter-
leaver we can separate this task into MIMO
demapping and channel decoding, approximating
joint detection using iterative exchange of reliabil-
ity information between the processing elements.
The iterative algorithm is illustrated in Fig. 2.
The detector takes channel observations and a
priori knowledge on the outer coded bits and
computes extrinsic information for each of the
MNT coded bits per vector channel symbol y. The
extrinsic information is deinterleaved to become
the a priori input to the outer soft in/soft out
decoder which calculates outer extrinsic informa-
tion. One iteration is completed by reinterleaving
the outer extrinsic information to become the a
priori knowledge to the inner detector.
Figure 4 illustrates the iterative decoding pro-
cess in an extrinsic information transfer (EXIT)
chart. It plots the transfer behavior of the inner
MIMO demapper and outer channel decoder in
a single chart (e.g., [12]). A trajectory visualizes
the progress of the iterative decoding and allows
verification of whether the MIMO demapper
and channel decoder interact efficiently. The left
chart illustrates the situation for NT ≤ NR and NT
≈ NR. The demapper curve represents the chan-
nel as seen by the outer decoder; it improves
slightly with increasing a priori knowledge at the
demapper, quantified in values from 0 to 1 (in
bits) along the x-axis. In combination with an
outer capacity achieving code, like a turbo or
LDPC code, there are hardly any iterations
between the MIMO demapper and turbo
decoder needed, as both curves match well.
25
TEN BRINK LAYOUT 8/3/06 1:27 PM Page 26

1 1
Bit error rate
below 0.1%

Inner
Extrinsic output from MIMO demapper

Extrinsic output from MIMO demapper

demapper for
NT >> NR
(e.g., 6 × 2)

Inner demapper for NT ≈ NR Trajectory of

(e.g., 6 × 6) iterative
detection and
decoding

Outer channel decoder

(turbo code, LDPC code)

Outer channel decoder

(LDPC code, matched to demapper)

0 0
0 1 0 1
A priori feedback from outer channel decoder A priori feedback from outer channel decoder

■ Figure 4. Spatial multiplexing and bit-interleaved coded modulation with iterative detection and decoding for NT ≈ NR (left) and
NT >> NR (right).

When there are many more transmit than receive transmitted from antenna 1 at time instance 2,
antennas (NT >> NR), however, the demapper and from antenna 2 at time instance 3; and so
output improves significantly with increasing a on. This can be extended to any number of trans-
priori knowledge (steep slope), as depicted in mit antennas, corresponding to a rate 1/NT repe-
the right chart; many iterations over a MIMO tition code. The downside is that detection at
detector and an outer decoder are required to the receiver is still rather complex, applying con-
converge toward low BER. Furthermore, the ventional methods known from equalization of
behavior of the channel decoder needs to be ISI channels, such as optimal Viterbi equaliza-
matched to that of the MIMO detector. LDPC tion. Of course, any of the SMX detectors dis-
codes can be specifically designed for this by cussed in the previous section will do the job as
appropriately adjusting the degree distributions, well. So we have suffered a rate loss, giving up
that is, choosing the right mixture of repetition some spectral efficiency to collect some more
code rates and parity-check code rates; this, spatial diversity, but have not gotten simpler
however, complicates system design. detection in return. Does this pay off? Can we
As N T > N R is a quite common scenario in, not get both, the benefit of transmit diversity
say, the downlink from a base station (with many and simple detection at the receiver? Another
antennas) to a mobile terminal (with only a few space-time technique comes to the rescue, com-
antennas), there needs to be a better way of monly referred to as space-time block coding,
benefiting from excess transmit antennas. Simply which is discussed next.
repeating symbols over different transmit anten-
nas sounds, intuitively, like a good idea. Let us SPACE-TIME BLOCK CODING
take a closer look. As with CDD, space-time block codes [13, 14]
can be viewed as repetition codes over space and
CYCLIC DELAY DIVERSITY time, simultaneously transmitting the same data
In cyclic delay diversity (CDD), delayed replicas over different antennas. Similar to MRC, a fad-
of the message are transmitted over different ing channel can be made more AWGN-like
antennas. In a way, it is like deliberately creating using this technique, providing increased robust-
a single antenna intersymbol interference (ISI) ness and range extension. A quite attractive vari-
channel from an otherwise perfectly frequency- ant of space-time codes is orthogonal space-time
flat multiple antenna channel. The upside is that block codes, which can be detected optimally at
all transmitted symbols benefit from the full spa- the receiver with very simple linear operations.
tial diversity, as can be seen from the transmit They enjoy popularity in both wireless cellular
matrix given for NT = 2, (e.g., UMTS) and wireless networking standards
(i.e., 802.11n, 802.16e). The Alamouti orthogo-
s s2 s3 … nal space-time block code for the 2 × 1 channel
S = 1 .
0 s1 s2 … [13] is given by
s − s2* 
Constellation symbol s 1 is transmitted from
S = 1 .
antenna 1 at time instance 1, and from antenna s2 s1* 
2 at time instance 2; constellation symbol s 2 is

26 IEEE Wireless Communications • August 2006

TEN BRINK LAYOUT 8/3/06 1:27 PM Page 27
At time instance 1, constellation symbol s 1 is
transmitted from antenna 1, and s2 from antenna
2. At time instance 2, symbol –s*2 is transmitted
from antenna 1, and s*1 from antenna 2. This
pattern is repeated with new symbols s 1 , s 2 .
There are two information symbols transmitted
per two channel uses, commonly referred to as
spatial rate 1. The code has full diversity, which
is a measure for the asymptotic slope of the
BER curve at high SNR. The Alamouti code is
the only orthogonal STBC with spatial rate 1
and full diversity for 2 × 1.
It is instructive to realize that in the world of
channel coding, a spatial rate of 1 would be con-
sidered a coding rate of 1/N T. Thus, as STBCs
are mere repetition codes (like CDD), they do
not offer coding gain — but diversity gains over
fading channels.
In diversity, the same information is transmit-
ted over different preferably independent trans-
mission paths to mitigate fading, interference,
and noise. To achieve diversity gains, the repeti-
tion code is a natural choice. To obtain the same
spectral efficiency as with spatial multiplexing,
however, one needs to go to higher order modu-
lation, putting tighter constraints on the linearity
of the RF chains and ADC/digital-to-analog con-
verter (DAC) resolution. Thus, the main objec-
tive of STBC is not to increase the data rate, but
to improve the robustness of the wireless link.
Alamouti’s simple 2 × 1 scheme triggered a
tremendous amount of research in this area.
Other codes were found for N T × N R = 3 × 1
and 4 × 1 scenarios [14]. Although full diversity,
they only convey three information symbols in
four channel uses, and thus incur a rate loss
(spatial rate 3/4). For NT × 1 scenarios, no gen-
eral construction of orthogonal STBC is known
with full diversity and full spatial rate. Moreover,
it can be proved [14] that no full rate (i.e., spa-
tial rate 1) orthogonal STBC exists with NT > 2.
Several other original nonorthogonal space-
time block codes exist that require full SMX-
type detection to recover the transmitted
information. However, we are walking a thin line
of gaining advantages through additional diversi-
ty on the channel — which might be small for
the third or fourth transmit antenna to be added
— and compromising this gain at the receiver by
making the detection more complicated, defeat-
ing the benefit of the additional diversity.
One way out of this dilemma is, in fact, rather
simple and pragmatic: The most popular STBC
used in practice is the 2 × 1 Alamouti code due
to simple optimal detection at full spatial rate.
The extension to more than two transmit anten-
nas is done by simply filling the additional anten-
nas with:
• Zeros (cyclic, can be viewed as antenna subset
selection)
• Repetition
• Combination with SMX (also referred to as
hybrid STBC/SMX)
This scheme was adopted for 802.11n; it is
discussed in greater detail in the next section.
As we have seen, an important aspect of
STBC is the ease of detection. One could argue
that other redundant space-time mappings, such
as other linear combinations at the transmitter
that do not enjoy simple detection but require
IEEE Wireless Communications • August 2006
full SMX-style MIMO detection, are more chal-
lenging for efficient receiver implementation.
To achieve diversity
Likewise, STBC should be considered as a front- gains, the repetition
end, on top of spatial multiplexing and channel
coding, using excess transmit antennas NT – NR code is a natural
to make the channel look “better” for the chan-
nel code, by: choice. To obtain the
• Increasing the robustness of the link (less
fades, higher SNR) same spectral
• Turning asymmetric channels (NT > NR) into
close to symmetric ones (NT ≈ NR), thus avoid-
efficiency as with
ing performance degradation when iterative spatial multiplexing,
detection and decoding cannot be performed
due to complexity/latency restrictions. however, one needs
AN EXAMPLE FROM STANDARDS to go to higher order
As we have familiarized ourselves with different modulation, putting
MIMO techniques, we are now ready to walk
through an example from the standards. The
tighter constraints on
wireless local area network (WLAN) standard the linearity of the
802.11a [5] has a physical layer (PHY) based on
orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing RF chains, and the
(OFDM), employing 64 subcarriers in a 20 MHz
band, and simple bit-interleaved coded modula- ADC/DAC resolution.
tion, with modulation alphabets ranging from
BPSK to 64-QAM. A memory 6 convolutional
code is used with coding rates R = 1/2 up to 3/4,
achieving data rates of 6 Mb/s (BPSK, rate 1/2)
up to 54 Mb/s (64-QAM, rate 3/4). A next-gen-
eration WLAN system (802.11n, [2]) supporting
PHY data rates beyond 200 Mb/s is currently
being discussed in the IEEE 802.11 standardiza-
tion body. It is based on the 802.11a/g OFDM
system, employing multiple antenna techniques
with some of the optional modes achieving data
rates beyond 500 Mb/s. With its full deployment
expected in 2007, WLAN IEEE 802.11n is likely
to be the first system that makes widespread use
of MIMO techniques.
The transmitter of an 802.11n device is depict-
ed in Fig. 5. The encoder parser distributes the
scrambled bits among NES channel encoders in
round-robin fashion. This is useful in two ways:
• Different coding rates can be realized, to be
mapped onto different spatial streams.
• A high-data-rate stream can be broken down
into several parallel slower bitstreams, to sim-
plify hardware implementation.
In fact, for data rates of 300 Mb/s and lower, a
single convolutional encoder is used, while for
rates greater than 300 Mb/s two encoders are
applied in parallel. Optionally, LDPC codes (RA
codes) can be used for channel coding. The
stream parser divides the output of the encoders
into NSS spatial streams, which go through dif-
ferent bit interleavers and QAM mappers, map-
ping the sequence of bits into complex
constellation symbols, facilitating the use of dif-
ferent QAM constellation sizes per transmit
antenna. The optional STBC (essentially the
Alamouti code) maps symbols from one into two
spatial streams, using repetition and complex
conjugation of constellation symbols, outputting
N STS space-time streams. It is only in effect if
N STS > N SS , with either STBC or a hybrid of
STBC and SMX being used. Obviously, the
structure of Fig. 5 is very flexible, and many dif-
ferent combinations of SMX and STBC are pos-
sible; even closed-loop modes such as
27
TEN BRINK LAYOUT 8/3/06 1:27 PM Page 28

TRENDS AND FUTURE CHALLENGES

Information
source We conclude by taking an outlook on some future
developments in coding over space and time.

Encoder parser Closed Loop — So far, we have almost exclusively

NES
channel Channel encoder Channel encoder Convolutional
rate R1 rate RNES codes,
encoders or LDPC codes
Stream parser
NSS Interleaver Interleaver
Spectrally
spatial efficient
streams QAM mapper 1 QAM mapper NSS modulation
NSTS Space/time block code Repetition
space-time coding
streams
Spatial mapper
NT iFFT iFFT
transmit
chains
Analog RF 1 Analog RF NT
■ Figure 5. Transmitter according to WLAN 802.11n.
beamforming techniques are supported in the
standard document.
Figure 6 shows a MIMO mode table accord-
ing to [2] with pragmatic extensions of the basic
Alamouti STBC to more than two transmit
antennas. Besides a pure SMX mode for each
value of N T , there are several special STBC
modes: For NT = 2, there is just the basic 2 × 1
STBC, abbreviated as AL. For NT = 3 transmit
antennas, the 2 × 1 AL scheme is extended to
three transmit antennas by inserting a zero
antenna output, which cycles through all anten-
nas in time (AL + zero); an alternative exten-
sion just repeats the spatial stream to be
transmitted on the third antenna (AL + rep); a
hybrid STBC/SMX mode, denoted AL + SMX,
uses two antennas for STBC, and the third
antenna for conveying a second spatial stream.
For NT = 4, there are even more different modes
possible: cyclic zero-antenna extension; antenna
repetition; repeating two space-time block codes
(AL + AL (rep)), or transmitting different data
(AL + AL (SMX)); and, finally, three spatial
streams using one Alamouti scheme, while con-
veying two additional spatial streams, labeled as
AL + SMX. For better averaging in OFDM sys-
tems, the antenna cycling (subset selection) is
applied over time and the subcarrier index with-
in one OFDM symbol, to ensure that all RF
chains are operated at the same transmit power.
As apparent from the table, 802.11n offers a
plethora of possible MIMO modes, many of
which are being defined as optional. The future
will show which of those modes will become the
most widely used, and thus most commonly
implemented ones.
paid attention to open loop transmission, with no
or only very limited feedback provided from
receiver to transmitter, like an SNR value or any
other simple channel quality indicator. If we had
knowledge of the channel matrix at the transmit-
ter, we could further increase the capacity of the
MIMO link [15]. This is referred to as closed loop
transmission. In eigenmode beamforming, the
transmit and receive vectors are multiplied with
properly chosen unitary matrices as obtained
from singular value decomposition. The effective
channel is turned into a diagonal matrix, with the
singular values being directly proportional to the
SNR of the NT parallel subchannels. The dynamic
range of the singular values can be high. To fully
take advantage of the capacity potential, both
modulation and channel coding have to support
this wide range. Typical implementations should
provide constellation sizes from BPSK to 256-
QAM, and code rates from 1/12 to 7/8, to allow
for waterfilling (adaptation of power and rate)
over the eigenmodes of the channel. Closed loop
transmission works well for NT > NR, but the sys-
tem engineering is more intricate than for open
loop. There are several obstacles in practice. It is
a nontrivial undertaking to obtain channel feed-
back of sufficiently high quality at a sufficiently
high update rate, just to keep up with the fluctua-
tions of the channel. Exploiting reciprocity of the
MIMO channel in time-division multiplexing is an
attractive option to simplify the feedback burden.
However, it has its own challenges, such as cali-
bration of RF chains and varying interference sce-
narios at both ends of the link, providing distorted
views on supposedly identical yet reciprocal chan-
nels. Nevertheless, it can almost be taken for
granted that engineering ingenuity will further
add refinements to the scheme, and make it hap-
pen in future applications.
Cooperative Coding — Point-to-point links using
multiple antennas have been comprehensively
analyzed over the past decade and are well
understood by now. However, there are several
communication scenarios that still offer plenty of
room for improvement, like the point-to-multi-
point link described next. In the multiple
user/multiple antenna broadcast channel, the
downlink transmissions from the base station to
all users should be done simultaneously, rather
than exclusively assigning time, frequency, or spa-
tial resources to a particular link. This promises a
significant increase in capacity of cellular net-
works [16], yet comes bundled with a whole new
set of challenges: A successful implementation
requires appropriate multiuser precoding at the
base station transmitter, also known as “dirty
paper coding,” and multiuser detection based on
vector quantization at the receiver, to avoid mul-
tiuser interference. Current research focuses on
finding practical schemes for combining channel
coding with “dirty paper” precoding and vector
quantization. Several other communication prob-
lems fall into this broad class of cooperative cod-

28 IEEE Wireless Communications • August 2006

TEN BRINK LAYOUT 8/3/06 1:27 PM Page 29

Spatial streams (SS) Space-time streams (STS)

Hybrid
STBC- Number of Output
SMX Number of Symbol Symbol
SS, 2n STS, index
scheme NSTS nSTS
NSS 2n 2n+1

1 a b
AL 1 a,b 2
2 -b* a* or or

1 a b a b 0 0
AL
+ 1 a,b 3 2 -b* a* 0 0 a b
zero
3 0 0 -b* a* -b* a*

1 a b
AL
+ 1 a,b 3 2 -b* a*
rep.
3 a b

1 a b
a,b
AL
+ 2 3 2 -b* a*
SMX
c,d
3 c d or or or

1 a b a b 0 0 0 0

AL 2 0 0 0 0 a b a b
+ 1 a,b 4
zero 3 0 0 -b* a* 0 0 -b* a*

4 -b* a* 0 0 -b* a* 0 0

1 a b

AL 2 -b* a*
+
AL 1 a,b 4
(rep) 3 a b

4 -b* a*

1 a b
a,b
AL 2 -b* a*
+
2 4
AL
(SMX) 3 c d
c, d
4 -d* c*

a,b 1 a b

AL 2 -b* a*
+ 3 c, d 4
SMX 3 c d

e, f 4 e f

■ Figure 6. Extensions of the basic 2 × 1 orthogonal space-time block code to more than two transmit antennas by zero insertion, repeti-
tion, and combinations with spatial multiplexing, as done in WLAN 802.11n.

ing, and we can expect advances in this field over
the next few years.
Cognitive Radio — What used to be software radio
(which has never has really taken off in commer-
cial systems) has now turned into something
called cognitive radio — and this time it seems it
is becoming real. In cognitive radio [17] it is all
about multidimensional spectrum reuse: in
space, in time, in frequency, breaking free of

IEEE Wireless Communications • August 2006 29

TEN BRINK LAYOUT 8/3/06 1:27 PM Page 30
With the ever- most of the constraints that hinder further opti-
mization of today’s wireless systems. A cognitive
increasing demand radio can sense its environment and location,
learn from its measurements, and react by adapt-
for faster wireless ing power, frequency, bandwidth, MIMO mode,
modulation, coding, protocol stack, and several
connectivity, it is other parameters of its transmission. The auto-
matic channel switching of WLAN 802.11 can
likely that a further already be regarded as a first humble step toward
evolution of current an environment-aware radio. But there is more
on the horizon: In 2002 FCC opened up the
single antenna spectrum from 3.1 to 10.6 GHz for unlicensed
ultrawideband (UWB) communications — across
systems toward several already existing licensed and unlicensed
bands. Although the allowed transmit levels are
including MIMO extremely low (–41 dBm/MHz), other regulatory
domains, like Japan and Europe, demand special
techniques is just a detect-and-avoid (DAA) modes, the details of
matter of time. which (e.g., threshold levels and response times)
are still to be defined. The basic idea, however,
is simple: The device has to detect victim sys-
tems, like WiMAX or WLAN services, using
spectral measurements, and avoid interference
by notching out the respective frequency compo-
nents from its transmit spectral mask. This allows
to satisfy different regulatory domains, and to
coexist with the primary users of the respective
spectrum. Depending on the flavor of UWB,
DAA might be more or less difficult to realize.
The UWB system according to the WiMedia
standard [18] has a built-in OFDM receiver that
is already capable of performing Fourier trans-
forms to decode the OFDM symbols. The
respective frequency domain processor just
needs some further tuning to provide accurate
spectral energy measurements. What cognitive
radio means for channel coding is less obvious,
but it is something like “one-code-fits-all”: The
code should be flexible with regard to block
length and code rate, and should be robust
against transmit notches, or support simple
means to “code around” those nulled subcarriers
in combination with a good interleaving strategy.
It should be simple to adapt to different channel
interfaces, like different numbers of transmit
antennas and modulation formats, and provide
excellent performance in conjunction with itera-
tive detection and decoding. A lot of creativity
has already gone into this, and more is to come.
SUMMARY
This article is an attempt to shed some light on
wireless communication using multiple antennas, as
seen from the perspective of the channel code.
Extending simple bit-interleaved coded modulation
to the matrix channel, with a single outer encoder
and an inner vector-QAM mapping at the transmit-
ter, appears to be the most pragmatic choice for
materializing a significant portion of the promised
high spectral efficiencies. Alamouti’s unique orthog-
onal space-time block code in combination with
repetitions and zero insertions as extensions to
more than two transmit antennas makes the chan-
nel more robust against fading and interference.
The commercial application of multiple antenna
techniques has just begun. While WLAN 802.11n
has moved to MIMO just recently, many other sys-
tems, like ultrawideband WPAN systems, are still
based on spectrally inefficient communication over
30
single antenna channels. With the ever increasing
demand for faster wireless connectivity, even the
seemingly vast bandwidth available for UWB com-
munication will become a bottleneck — thus, it is
likely that a further evolution of current single
antenna systems toward including MIMO tech-
niques is just a matter of time.
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BIOGRAPHY
S TEPHAN TEN B RINK (stenbrink@realtek-us.com) received a
Dipl.-Ing. degree in electrical engineering and a Dr.-Ing.
degree from the University of Stuttgart, Germany, in 1997
and 2000, respectively. From 2000 to June 2003 he was
with the Wireless Research Laboratory, Bell Laboratories,
Lucent Technologies, Holmdel, New Jersey, conducting
research on channel coding for multiple-antenna systems.
Since July 2003 he has been with Realtek Semiconductor
Corp., Irvine, California, where he is involved in the devel-
opment and standardization of high-throughput wireless
systems. His research interests include concatenated coding
and iterative decoding, multiple-antenna communications,
cognitive radios and watermarking schemes.
IEEE Wireless Communications • August 2006