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The signal detection algorithm of the vertical BLAST (Bell Laboratories Layered Space-Time) wireless communications architecture is briefly described. Using this joint space-time approach, spectral efficiencies ranging from 20-40bit/s/Hz have been demonstrated in the laboratory under flat fading conditions at indoor fading rates. Early results are presented.

Abstract-We investigate robust wireless communication in high-scattering propagation environments using multi-element antenna arrays (MEA's) at both transmit and receive sites. A simplified, but highly spectrally efficient space-time communication processing method is presented. The user's bit stream is mapped to a vector of independently modulated equal bit-rate signal components that are simultaneously transmitted in the same band. A detection algorithm similar to multiuser detection is employed to detect the signal components in white Gaussian noise (WGN). For a large number of antennas, a more efficient architecture can offer no more than about 40% more capacity than the simple architecture presented. A testbed that is now being completed operates at 1.9 GHz with up to 16 quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) transmitters and 16 receive antennas. Under ideal operation at 18 dB signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), using 12 transmit antennas and 16 receive antennas (even with uncoded communication), the theoretical spectral efficiency is 36 bit/s/Hz, whereas the Shannon capacity is 71.1 bit/s/Hz. The 36 bits per vector symbol, which corresponds to over 200 billion constellation points, assumes a 5% block error rate (BLER) for 100 vector symbol bursts.

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