Enhanced performance is achieved by combining channel coding with the
space-time coding principles. With K synchronized terminal units
transmitting on N antennas to a base station having M.gtoreq.K receive
antennas, increased system capacity and improved performance are attained
by using a concatenated coding scheme where the inner code is a
space-time block code and the outer code is a conventional channel error
correcting code. Information symbols are first encoded using a
conventional channel code, and the resulting signals are encoded using a
space-time block code. At the receiver, the inner space-time block code
is used to suppress interference from the other co-channel terminals and
soft decisions are made about the transmitted symbols. The channel
decoding that follows makes the hard decisions about the transmitted
symbols. Increased data rate is achieved by, effectively, splitting the
incoming data rate into multiple channels, and each channel is
transmitted over its own terminal.