Method for transmitting and estimating symbols coded with a coding matrix, and corresponding receiver and transmitter

Method for estimating an incoming signal corresponding to a sequence of symbols coded with a coding matrix and transmitted through a propagation channel, the sequence of symbols comprising at least a first, a second, a third and a fourth symbols, the value of each symbol belonging to at least a signal constellation,

• each component of the coding matrix being a linear combination of two symbols among the first, the second, the third and the fourth symbols, a first and a second components of a first column of the coding matrix being transmitted respectively through a first and a second transmit antennas at a first time slot, a first and a second components of a second column of the coding matrix being transmitted respectively through the first and the second transmit antennas at a second time slot,
• said propagation channel being defined by a channel matrix comprising components representing a propagation channel response between the first transmit antenna and at least a first and a second receive antennas, and between the second transmit antenna and at least the first and the second receive antennas, said method comprising at least the steps of:
• computing a first intermediate signal from the incoming signal, said first intermediate signal being a first affine function in which the variable is the first symbol,
• computing a second intermediate signal from the incoming signal, said second intermediate signal being a second affine function in which the variable is the second symbol,
• estimating the value of the first symbol from the first intermediate signal,
• estimating the value of the second symbol from the second intermediate signal,
• selecting a set of couples of values, each couple of values consisting in the values of two symbols belonging to the signal constellation,
• for each couple of values selected, calculating a Euclidean distance between the incoming signal and a noiseless signal, the noiseless signal being defined as the product of the channel matrix and the coding matrix corresponding to the selected couple of values and the estimated values of the first and the second symbols,
• selecting the minimal Euclidean distance among the Euclidean distances respectively calculated for the different selected couples of values, and
• selecting the values of the first, second, third and fourth symbols corresponding to the selected minimum Euclidean distance