On Punctured Pragmatic Space-Time Codes in Block Fading Channel

Abstract: This paper considers the use of punctured convolutional codes to obtain pragmatic space-time trellis codes over block-fading channel. We show that good performance can be achieved even when puncturation is adopted and that we can still employ the same Viterbi decoder of the convolutional mother code by using approximated metrics without increasing the complexity of the decoding operations.