Abstract: A scheme of designing differential space-time code is proposed for correlated fading MIMO channels. The design criterion is to minimize the upper bound on the average pairwise error probability of differential detection. The optimal design requires knowledge of correlation both in the transmitter and the receiver, which must be obtained numerically. By ignoring receiver correlation, the amount of feedback can be reduced and a closed-form suboptimal solution can be obtained. Simulation results show that the proposed design improves the error performance, and the suboptimal design performs close to the optimal design.

Key words: MIMO channels, fading correlation, differential space-time block code, pairwise error probability