Algebraic reduction for space-time codes based on quaternion algebras

In this paper we introduce a new right preprocessing method for the decoding of 2 × 2 algebraic STBCs, called algebraic reduction, which exploits the multiplicative structure of the code. The principle of the new reduction is to absorb part of the channel into the code, by approximating the channel matrix with an element of the maximal order of the algebra. We prove that algebraic reduction attains the receive diversity when followed by a simple ZF detection. Simulation results for the Golden Code show that using MMSE-GDFE left preprocessing, algebraic reduction with simple ZF detection has a loss of only 3 dB with respect to ML decoding.