A Concatenated ML Decoder for ST／SFBC-OFDM Systems in Double Selective Fading Channels

This paper presented a concatenated maximum-likelihood (ML) decoder for space-time/space-frequency block coded orthogonal frequency diversion multiplexing (ST/SFBC-OFDM) systems in double selective fading channels. The proposed decoder first detects space-time or space-frequency codeword elements separately. Then,according to the coarsely estimated codeword elements, the ML decoding is performed in a smaller constellation element set to searching final codeword. It is proved that the proposed decoder has optimal performances if and only if subchannels are constant during a codeword interval. The simulation results show that the performances of proposed decoder is close to that of the optimal ML decoder in severe Doppler and delay spread channels. However,the complexity of proposed decoder is much lower than that of the optimal ML decoder.