Spatial division multiplexing for MIMO devices

摘要

A communications system, comprising a transmitter and a receiver, are operable to communicate information using a spatial multiplexing method. The transmitter is operable to separate data to be transmitted into two categories, Alamouti encoding the symbols of the first category and transmitting them on an even number of antennae, and not encoding the second category of symbols, but merely using a modulation scheme such as QAM, and transmitting them on one or more further antennae.;A corresponding receiver is operable to successively detect signal components received on corresponding spatially displaced antennae, and then to determine an estimated channel response from the signal components. A weighting function is then derived to extract a stream of data from the received signal, which, on the basis that the Alamouti STBC encoded signal will have the highest signal to noise ratio, will normally be the latter, while other data not encoded according to Alamouti is detected thereafter.