Effects of Iterative Detection and Decoding on the Performance of BLAST

In BLAST (Bell Labs's Layered Space Time) systems, very high spectral efficiency are achieved by employing antenna arrays at both transmit and receive sides. Coding for these array systems is an interesting topic, and as such, has seen intensive research recently. In this paper, we study coding architectures constructed from conventional codes including convolutional codes and Reed-Solomon codes. Our main interest is in the performance and complexity trade-offs involved in the design of coding/decoding and signal detection algorithms. We show that iterative detection and decoding (IDD) can significantly improve the performance of coded BLAST. In some cases, IDD allows for very simple detection algorithms to be used at the receiver front end. Therefore, it may in fact reduce the overall receiver complexity. Our results again demonstrate that coded V-BLAST (vertical-BLAST) is a promising architecture to achieve the great potential of BLAST with limited complexity.