On the use of Quasi-orthogonal space-time-frequency codes in MB-OFDM UWB

Space-Time-Frequency Codes (STFCs), which haverecently been proposed in the literature for Multiband OFDMUltra-Wideband (MB-OFDM UWB) systems to improve thesystem capacity, error performance and wireless communicationrange, are all constructed based on orthogonal structures. Thispaper examines the application of Quasi-Orthogonal STFCs(QOSTFCs) to enhance further either data rate or error performancein the recently proposed STFC MB-OFDM UWB systems.It will be shown that QOSTFCs can provide significantly bettererror performance, compared to the conventional MB-OFDMUWB (without STFCs) as well as to the Orthogonal STFCs(OSTFCs) of the same order, at the same data rate, withoutincreasing the total transmission power. Equivalently, QOSTFCscan provide higher data rates with the same error performance,compared to OSTFCs.