On Time-Switched Space-Time Transmit Diversity in MISO Systems

We investigate the performance of time-switched space-time transmit diversity schemes applied to a wireless communication system with multiple antennae at the transmitter and single antenna at the receiver. A new method of analysis of timeswitched transmit diversity schemes is presented which builds on an information theoretic equivalent channel and a generalized definition of diversity for coded systems. We show that coded timeswitched Alamouti space-time block codes actually outperform all coded orthogonal space-time block codes which use more than two antennae. Cutoff rate analysis for modulated signals, proves their performance to be close to optimum in a range of code-rates, which is interesting for wireless communication.