Quasi Trace-Orthogonal Space-Time Block Coding for Underwater MIMO-PPM Acoustic Communications

The achievement of an optimal trade-off between reliability and rate has always been one of the most challenging issues in underwater acoustic links. In this context, the implementation of suitable transmission techniques on Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) architectures results to be an efficient solution to improve the communication performance. Following this direction, we investigate a space-time block coding scheme for MIMO-PPM (Pulse Position Modulation) systems that is able to provide a satisfactory compromise between rate and reliability.