Reduced complexity receivers for Layered space-time CPM

Layered space-time (LST) transmissions employing continuous phase modulations (CPM) are well motivated for both bandwidth- and power-limited multiantenna communications. However, one of the major challenges for LST-CPM is the high complexity it incurs with maximum likelihood (ML) detection. In this paper, we develop reduced complexity LST-CPM receivers. First, we consider single antenna systems. Specifically, we study a reduced complexity Viterbi receiver for binary CPM. Based on this design, we introduce differential encoding for a class of CPM signals and analyze its performance gain both theoretically and with simulations. Second, we focus on multiantenna LST systems with minimum shift-keying (MSK)-type modulations. With group milling-canceling (NC) and low-complexity linear equalization, we convert a coded multiuser detection problem into an uncoded one with small equalization loss. We also find that the combination of sphere decoding with hard-decision iterative processing is effective in boosting performance with a controllable complexity increase. Both analytical and simulated performance confirm that the novel LST-MSK receiver exhibits markedly unproved performance relative to conventional NC detectors with moderate complexity increase.