| The use of multiple antennas in most future wireless communication systems seems
to be inevitable. Today, the main question is how to include multiple antennas and
what are the appropriate methods for specific applications. The academic interest in
space-time coding and multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems has been
growing for the last few years. Recently, the industry has shown a lot of interest
as well. It is amazing how fast the topic has emerged from a theoretical curiosity
to the practice of every engineer in the field. It was just a few years ago, when I
started working at AT&T Labs – Research, that many would ask “who would use
more than one antenna in a real system?” Today, such skepticism is gone.
The fast growth of the interest and activities on space-time coding has resulted in
a spectrum of people who actively followthe field. The range spans from mathematicians
who are only curious about the interesting mathematics behind space-time
coding to engineers who want to build it. There is a need for covering both the
theory and practice of space-time coding in depth. This book hopes to fulfill this
need. The book has been written as a textbook for first-year graduate students and
as a reference for the engineers who want to learn the subject from scratch. An
early version of the book has been used as a textbook to teach a course in spacetime
coding at the University of California, Irvine. The goal of such a course is the
introduction of space-time coding to anyone with some basic knowledge of digital
communications. In most cases, we start with common ideas for single-input
single-output (SISO) channels and extend them to MIMO channels. Therefore, students
or engineers with no knowledge of MIMO systems should be able to learn all
the concepts. While graduate students might be interested in all the details and the
proofs of theorems and lemmas, engineers may skip the proofs and concentrate on
the results without sacrificing the continuity of the presentation. |
