Joint beamforming and space-time coding for MIMO channels

This chapter introduces joint beamforming (or precoding) and space-time coding for multiple input multiple output (MIMO) channels. First, we explain key ideas of beamforming and space- time coding and then we discuss the joint design of beamformer and space-time codes and its benefits. Beamforming techniques play a key role in smart antenna systems as they can provide various features, including spatially selective transmissions to increase the capacity and coverage increase. STC techniques can offer both coding gain and diversity gain over MIMO channels. Thus, joint beamforming and STC is a more practical approach to exploit both spatial correlation and diversity gain of MIMO channels. We believe that joint design will be actively employed in future standards for wireless communications.