Patent ID: 7675990

Claim:
A system of space-time coding for a radio system utilizing M transmit antennas and T symbol intervals, where M and T are integers satisfying 2≦M≦T, said system comprising: a) a digital signaling constellation with p m constellation points, with p a prime integer and m≧2 a positive integer; b) means for selecting the points in the digital signaling constellation via an address; c) means for computing a constellation point address from a vector of p-ary symbols of length m; d) transforming means that maps vectors of m p-ary symbols to transformed vectors of m p-ary symbols; e) at least one constituent p-ary code, each said constituent p-ary code being used to map sequences of source symbols to sequences of coded symbols; f) means for combining m p-ary code words from the constituent p-ary code to form a multi-level code word comprising p m -ary coded symbols from the p m -ary signaling constellation, said combining comprising taking an initial p-ary symbol from each of the m code words as a vector of length m, transforming the vector via the transforming means to produce a transformed vector, computing an address from the transformed vector via the address computation means, using the address to select a constellation point in accordance with the selection means, and repeating these steps for each of the next sets of p-ary symbols from the m code words; and g) means for distributing the p m -ary coded symbols among the M transmit antennas and T symbol intervals for transmission.