Patent ID: 7471742

Claim:
A communication system capable of transmitting a coded information message via simultaneous transmission across a number M.gtoreq.2 of transmitter antennas, said communication system comprising: one or more constituent encoders for binary codes that are maximal rank d under binary phase shift keying (BPSK) modulation, where d is a design parameter of the system having value between 1 and M inclusive; a space-time encoder that invokes a set of constituent encoders to produce a set of binary code words, each of which is capable of being arranged into an M.times.T code word matrix in which the i-th row comprises coded bits to be modulated and transmitted from the i-th antenna during T symbol transmission intervals; and a modulation unit capable of generating amplitude-modulated phase shift keying (AM-PSK) modulation consisting of a number 2.sup.L.gtoreq.2 rings of phase shift keying (PSK) modulation, said modulation unit producing AM-PSK symbols for each of the M transmitter antennas in every transmission symbol interval in accordance with the set of binary code word matrices, the (i,j)-th entries of said binary code word matrices together identifying the AM-PSK constellation point to be transmitted by the i-th transmitter antenna at the j-th symbol transmission interval, wherein: the space-time encoder produces a number L+K of binary code words partitioned into two subsets {A.sub.1, A.sub.2, . . . , A.sub.L} and {C.sub.0, C.sub.1, . . . , C.sub.K−1}; and the modulation unit produces symbols from an AM-PSK constellation consisting of 2.sup.L rings of 2.sup.K-PSK using the first set of L binary code words for amplitude modulation and the second set of K binary code words for phase modulation.