Computing the Performance of Unitary Space-Time Group Constellations from their Character Table


Amin Shokrollahi


Abstract: Multiple antennas can greatly increase the data rate and reliability of a wireless communication link in a fading environment. It is well-known that unitary matrices can be used to design differentially modulated space-time constellations. These constellations have a particularly efficient description if they form a finite group under matrix multiplication. In this paper we will show how to compute parameters of such groups crucial for their use as space-time constellations, using only the character table of the group. Since character tables for many groups are known and tabulated, this method could be used to quickly test, for a given group, which of its irreducible representations can be used to design good unitary space-time constellations. We demonstrate our method by computing the eigenvalues of all the irreducible representations of the special linear group SL(2,q) over a finite prime field F_q of odd characteristic, and study in detail the performance of a particular 8-dimensional representation of SL(2,17).

Status: Bell Labs Technical Memorandum

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Bert Hochwald<hochwald@lucent.com>