A new design criterion and construction method for space-time trellis codes based on classification of error events

The known design criterions of Space-Time Trellis Codes (STTC) on slow Rayleigh fading channel are rank, determinant and trace criterion. These criterions are not advantageous not only in operation but also in performance. With classifying the error events of STTC, a new criterion was presented on slow Rayleigh fading channels. Based on the criterion, an effective and straightforward multi-step method is proposed to construct codes with better performance. This method can reduce the computation of search to small enough. Simulation results show that the codes searched by computer have the same or even better performance than the reported codes.