We propose a quasi-linear trellis-coded modulation (TCM) using nonbinary convolutional codes for quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM). First, we study a matched mapping which is able to reduce the computational complexity of the Euclidean distances between signal points of MQAM. As an example, we search for rate R=1/2 convolutional codes for coded 64QAM by this method. The symbol error rates of the proposed codes are estimated by the distance properties theoretically and they are verified by simulation. In addition, we compare the minimum free Euclidean distances of these new codes with their upper bounds. Finally, the bit error probabilitiy of the proposed coded modulation is compared with uncoded signal constellations and a conventional TCM code proposed by Ungerboeck. The result shows the proposed scheme outperform them on the AWGN channels.

We propose a 2 × 2 space-time block code based on a trace criterion for 64-quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM). We introduce a method to easily calculate the trace norm of a space-time code for 64-QAM, and propose a new space-time code searched by this method. The error rate performance of the proposed code is compared with that of the Alamouti code. By comparison of the theoretical upper bounds, the proposed space-time code is better than the Alamouti code, when the number of receiving antennas is more than one. Moreover, bit error rate performance of the proposed code is compared with maximum likelihood decoding on perfect channel state information Rayleigh fading channels by computer simulations. These results show the proposed code almost outperforms the Alamouti code when the number of receive antennas is more than one, and the increased number of receiving antennas with our code is a decided advantage.

This letter proposes a transmission scheme called spatial vector (SV), which is effective for Nakagami-m fading multiple-input multiple-output channels. First, the analytical error rate of SV is derived for Nakagami-m fading MIMO channels. Next, an example of SV called integer SV (ISV) is introduced. The error performance was evaluated over Nakagami-m fading from m = 1 to m = 50 and compared with spatial modulation (SM), enhanced SM, and quadrature SM. The results show that for m > 1, ISV outperforms the SM schemes and is robust to m variations.