Algebraic Space Time Coding in a CDMA System
over a Rayleigh fading Channel
Rahia GHARSALLAH
National Engineering School of Tunis
SUP’COM, 6’Tel Laboratory
Tél: (216) 97102385
Email: radhia.gharsallah@gmail.com
Abstract The originality of this paper consists of combining
Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) technique with Multi
Input Multi Output (MIMO) antenna system. The main objective
of our contribution is to improve the capacity of the existing DS-
CDMA systems by supporting an increased number of users and
to achieve good performance in terms of bit error rate. This new
communication scheme combining the two techniques benefit
from perfect codes by employing a spectrally efficient Algebraic
Space Time Coding (ASTC) and spreading spectrum by using
CDMA technique equipped with Multi User Detector (MUD) that
is near far resistant. In our system each user is distinguished by
its spreading code signature and its unique channel impulse
response (CIR) transfer function. The MIMO-CDMA system,
associated by multi user detector, improves the spectral efficiency
of wireless system, combat channel fading and reduce
narrowband interference. The resulting is a multi-user CDMA-
ASTC solution promising high speed communication for 4G
cellular wireless networks. Our study and numerical results show
the utility of this new wireless communication; a significant BER
versus Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) was achieved thus Multiple
access interference (MAI) is suppressed and so supporting a large
number of users.
Key words: Algebraic space time coding (ASTC), DS-
CDMA, ML decoder, MMSE, ZF, MUD.
I-INTRODUCTION
The ever-increasing demand on wireless communication today
has led to a remarkable need of a greater spectral efficiency.
Therefore, a significant interest of late has been to develop
systems that offer both high capacity and high data speed,
along with MAI resistance especially in the downlink (from
base station to mobiles). Given the enormous potential of
multi user MIMO-CDMA systems, researchers have recently
begun to investigate the possible capacity and bit error rate
(BER) performance of such systems. In multi antennas
communication systems, investigations of N transmit and M
receive antennas systems showed that the capacity of such
systems increases linearly with the minimum of N and M [2],
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Ridha BOUALLEGUE
National Engineering School of Sousse
SUP’COM, 6’Tel Laboratory
Tél: (216) 98348219
Email: ridha.bouallegue@supcom.rnu.tn
[3]. High data rates are obtained by simultaneously sending
signals from several transmit antennas. To protect the integrity
of the transmitted information, transmit diversity is obtained
by introducing redundancy among the transmitted signals over
M transmit antennas (space) and T time periods (time). Under
quasi-static fading channel, the maximum combined transmit–
receive diversity order equals to MN [1].
A variety of Space-Time codes exists in the literature. In [2],
Alamouti proposed a new modulation scheme over N = 2
transmit and M receive antennas where a rate of one symbol
per channel use (PCU) with 2N diversity was achieved [8].
The ML detection of the Alamouti scheme can be
implemented by a linear complexity decorrelator. The later
scheme was generalized by Tarokh et al. [4], where complex
ST modulations were proposed with rate 1/2 and 3/4 symbols
PCU. In [5], another different approach is proposed to exploit
transmit–receive diversity using rotated constellations. The so-
called diagonal algebraic space–time (DAST) modulations
achieve diversity N*M and have a rate of one symbol PCU
using real or complex input constellations. Hassibi and
Hochwald proposed to construct high-rate ST modulations by
maximizing the average mutual information (MI) between the
ST modulator output and the decoder input [1]. The so-called
linear and dispersive (LD) ST codes (or modulations) were
proposed for this purpose. However, maximizing the average
MI does not necessarily exploit the hidden transmit diversity
in the system [4], [5].
Codes described above are full rate, full rank and have optimal
coding gain. Unfortunately, the best existing codes suffer from
vanishing determinants as spectral efficiency grows. A new
family of codes based on cyclic division algebras was
constructed in [4] to mitigate this problem. The so called
Quaternionic ST codes have good performance but they suffer
from the non uniform distribution of the energy in the
codeword. To alleviate this problem, a new family of codes,
called Perfect ST codes for N = 2 was created. These codes are PTc is the signature waveform of user k.
characterized by a good energy efficiency given by a uniform
Signal received by antenna p can so be expressed as:
energy distribution and transmitted constellations have no
shaping loss. The later code was generalized by Oggier in [6] N
these codes can be decoded either by the ML (maximum r p (t ) = ∑ hn , p S n (t ) + n p (t )(2)
likelihood decoder) or by applying the sphere decoder or the n =1
Shnorr-Euchner algorithm. In this work we investigate S n (t ) means signal transmitted by n th transmit antenna at
performance of these perfect codes in a multi user CDMA
time t.
MIMO system.

This document is organized as fallows; in section II we present hn , p is the complex channel coefficient between the nth
the system model in order to describe the context. In section transmit antenna and the p th receive antenna. The channel
III we are interested especially by the receiver and haw we can amplitudes are independent, zero-mean complex Gaussian
decode the received signal in fact different MIMO CDMA variables with unit variance.
Multiuser (MCM) detectors are discussed. The last section
deals with simulation and numerical results to finish by a ( )
E hi*1, j1hi 2, j 2 = I NM (3)
conclusion.

II - SYSTEM MODEL Where I N denotes an identity matrix of size N.

The received codeword matrix can be written as :
We consider the uplink receiver that has knowledge of the
signature waveforms of all users. The system consists of a Y = HX + n (4)
single base station with N transmit antennas and K users, each
equipped with M receive antennas as shown in Fig1. Each data Where:
symbol of each user is spread by a length Q pseudo noise
X is the transmitted codeword matrix.
sequence and then transmitted through a Rayleigh fading
channel.As said above, Fig 1 represents our communication H is the channel coefficient matrix.
scheme; in fact the data symbol of each user will be modulated
before being spread by a pseudo noise sequence. The spread n is the AWGN (Additive white Gaussian noise).
data will then be coded using algebraic space time coding.
For N=2, using golden algebraic space time coding, we
At the receiver, we use a multi user detection algorithm to suppose that each user transmit four data symbols. The
detect the information symbol of each user separately and then transmitted codeword matrix of user k can be written as
demodulate the resulting signals.
1 α ( S1 + θ .S 2 ) α ( S 3 + θ .S 4 ) 
k k k k
The input output relation for synchronous uplink CDMA- χk =   (5)
MIMO is given by.
N K Q
5 α ( S 3k + θ .S 4k ) α (S1k + θ .S 2k )
R p (t ) = ∑ ∑∑ Pk S k , j c k PTc (t − iTc)h p , j + n (1)
j =1 k =1 i =1 1 + 51 / 2
θ= ; α = 1 + i − iθ
Signal received by the pth receive antenna at time t. 2
Where:
1 − 51 / 2
N : Number of transmit antenna. θ= ; α = 1 + i − iθ
2
M : number of receive antenna.
θ is the golden number.
Q : Spreading factor.
α = 1 + i(1 − θ )
Pk is the amplitude of k th user
The resulting codeword matrix of all users is given by:
s k , j is the modulated data symbol of the kth user transmitted
over antenna i; where i = 1..N
ck is the normalized pseudo noise PN sequence of user k .

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 1 α ( x1 + θ .x2 ) α ( x3 + θ .x4 )  α αθ 0 0   x1 
X =   (6)  iα iα θ   x 2 
5 α ( x3 + θ .x4 ) α ( x1 + θ .x2 ) 1 0 0
. (9)
5 0 0 α αθ   x3 
x i = CAS i   
α α θ 0 0   x4 
C = [C1 C2 … C K ]
A = diag ( P1 , P2 ,… , PK , ) Received signal can be written as:

1
1 2 K y M ,T = H MN φS + n M ,T (10)
S i = [ S , S ,...S ] is the i th information data transmitted
i i i 5
by the K users.
Where:
III DECODING AND MCM DETECTION
α αθ 0 0 
The received data is expressed by:  0 0 iα iαθ 
φ = 
 y1 y3   h1,1 h1, 2  X 1 − X 2*   n1 n3   0 0 α αθ 
  =  +  (7)  
 y2 y 4   h2,1 h2,2  X 2 X 1*   n2 n4  α αθ 0 0 

y1 = y1 (t ) = h1,1 X 1 + h1, 2 X 2 + n1 So we obtain a non coded equation system of dimension


 y 2 = y 2 ( t ) = h2 ,1 X 1 + h2 , 2 X 2 + n 2 N .TxM .T

 y 3 = y 3 (t + T ) = − h1,1 X 2* + h1, 2 X 1* + n 3 y = MS + n (11)
(8)
 y 4 = y 4 (t + T ) = − h2 ,1 X 2* + h2 , 2 X 1* + n 4
Where :

1
M = H N .TxM .T φ (12)
There are different space time decoders, in our case, coherent 5
MIMO channel; we can use the sphere decoder or Schnorr
Euchner algorithm. To obtain the lattice representation of the system described
above, real and imaginary parts of the received codeword
In this work we will use the ML decoding with the sphere matrix must be separated, so we obtain:
decoder, to decode received data using the lattice, we must
adopt our system to a non coded equation system. 1
yR = H Rφ R S R + n R (13)
5
Channel C M Where:
estimation L
o

Channel
m D ℜ(H) 0 − ℑ(H) 0 
estimation
b E  0 ℜ(H) 0 −ℑ(H)
i C
HR = 
n O ℑ(H) 0 ℜ(H) 0  (14)
D  
 0 ℑ(H) ℜ(H) 
e E 0
r R
Channel
estimation

Fig 1: Space time decoder ℜ(φ) −ℑ(φ) ℜ(S) ℜ(n)

φR =. ,SR =  ,nR =   (15)
The vectored vector X becomes:
ℑ(φ) ℜ(φ)  ℑ(S) ℑ(n)

X NT = vect( X ) = Generally we write, y R = M R S R + nR (16)

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The generator matrix of the lattice is of dimension 8: w = R −1 (27)
The decision vector is then:
1
MR = H Rφ R (17)
5 d = R−1(RAB+ n) = AB+ R−1n
(28)
The bit decision is determined by the sign of the decision
For a coded MIMO system, the lattice generator matrix of vector:
received points is the combination of the generator matrix of
transmitted points φ R and the channel coefficients
bˆ = sign ( d ) (29)
matrix H R The QR decomposition of the lattice generator
matrix is given by. The decision vector has covariance matrix:

M R = QR
Where R is an upper triangular matrix and Q is a Hermitian
(18)
[(
E R −1 n R −1 n )( ) H
]= σ 2
R −1 (30)

matrix: QQ
T
= I (m ) Which can results in noise power enhancement, creating a gap
between the single-user error performance and the decorrelator
So equation (16) becomes: error probability.
y R = QRS R + n R (19) The MMSE detector has a linear transformation equivalent to :
The product of the lattice by the matrix Q gives an equivalent
( R + σA −2 ) −1 (31)
lattice.
The decoder searches the nearest point that minimise the From the equation we can say that the MME detector gives
Euclidean distance. good performance in terms of BER.

2 IV SIMULATION RESULTS
Sˆ = arg min y R' − RS R (20)
In our simulation, we consider an M-QAM constellation. The
Where
spreading factor is equal to 16. The number of users
y R' = Q T y R = RS R + n R' (21) communicating simultaneously is 6.

The output of ML decoder is an estimation of the spread data
of the K users, these signals well be applied to a multi user
detection algorithm in order to detect the signal of each user
separately.
Linear multi-user detectors perform linear transformations on
the matched filter output Y. We suppose that each data symbol
contains L bytes. Collectively the matched filter output for all
K users and L bytes can be expressed in a long vector as:
Before simulating the BER versus SNR, we have represented
the MIMO channel capacity versus SNR in order to show the
contribution of the MIMO systems in fact the use of two
transmit and two receive antenna make a gain of 5dB for a
capacity of 5 bits/s.
MIMO channel capcity
25

[
Y = Y T (1), …, Y T ( L) ]T
(22)
20
N=1
N= 2
N=3
,
,
,
M
M
M
=
=
=
1
2
2
Where: N=2 , M = 3

Y (i ) = [Y1 (i ),… , YK (i) ]

T N=4 , M = 4
(23)
Capacity bits/s/Hz

15
T
Y (i ) = C CAbi + ni (24)
10

Y = RAB + n (25)
5

bi is a vector of size K that contains the i th byte of each user

Let w be a linear transformation vector for the multi user 0
-10 -5 0 5 10 15 20
detector. The decision vector is: SNR in dB

d = wT Y (26) Fig 2: MIMO channel capacity

The decorrelating detector in [3] has a linear transformation
equivalent to the inverse of the correlation matrix R = CC .
T Simulation results show that Algebraic Space Time Codes are
performed not only in a simple communication system but

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also when using CDMA. We show also that the gold code implement the Gold code in the future generation of cellular
have similar bit error rate compared to the Alamouti code. networks. The difficulties in decoding push us to think on the
0
Alamouti-CDMA reduction of the decoder complexity.
10
QAM 4
QAM 16 References:
QAM 64
[1] H. Huang, H. Viswanathan, and G. J. Foschini, “Multiple
-1
10
Antennas in Cellular CDMA Systems: Transmission,
Detection, and Spectral Efficiency,” IEEE Trans. Wireless
Commun., vol. 1, pp.383-392, July 2002.
BER moyen

-2
10 [2] M. Alamouti “A Simple Transmit Diversity Technique for
Wireless Communications,” IEEE JOURNAL ON SELECT
AREAS IN COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 16, NO. 8,
-3
10 OCTOBER 1998
[3] H. Huang, H. Viswanathan, and G. J. Foschini, “Multiple
Antennas in Cellular CDMA Systems: Transmission,
Detection, and Spectral Efficiency,” IEEE Trans. Wireless
-4
10
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14
SNR dB Commun., vol. 1, pp.383-392, July 2002.
Fig 3: Multi user CDMA-MIMO system using Alamouti code [4] J.-C. Belfiore, G. Rekaya, E. Viterbo: "The Golden Code:
A 2 x 2 Full-Rate Space-Time Code with Non-Vanishing
0
Golden code in a multi user context Determinants,"
10
QAM 4 IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, vol. 51, n. 4, pp.
BPSK
QAM 16
1432-1436, Apr.2005
-1
10
[5] S. Galliou and J.-C. Belfiore, « A new family of full Rate,
Full Diverse Space –Time codes based on Galois Theory, » in
-2
10 proceeding of IEEE international symposium on information
Theory, Lausanne, Switzerland, p.419, July 2002
BER

-3 [6] F.E Oggier G,Rekaya, J.-C. Belfiore and E.Viterbo«Perfect

10
space time block codes » in proceeding of IEEE Transactions
on Information Theory, vol 52, n 9 September 2006.
-4
10

-5
10
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
SNR dB

Fig 4 : Multi user CDMA-MIMO system using Gold code

In conclusion, we can say that the Golden code gives best

performance gain in comparison with the Alamouti code
because we can transmit four data symbols simultaneously but
we can transmit only two data symbols in Alamouti case. So
the Golden code ensure high data speed with considerable
BER.

V CONCLUSION

We have proposed a CDMA communication system, based on

Algebraic space time coding; we have used the golden code
for 2*2 antennas system. Numerical results show that this later
have a BER comparable to the Alamouti code, also we know
that the gold code has good properties, in fact it is full runk,
full rate, and non-vanishing determinant for increasing rate:
the minimum determinant of the Golden Code is 1/5. It
achieves the Diversity Multiplexing Frontier and the spectral
efficiency is 2log2 (M) bits/s/Hz. Based on theoretical and
simulation results, we demonstrate that it is interesting to

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