Method and apparatus for space-time turbo-coded modulation

A wireless spread spectrum mobile cellular phone having a plurality of antennas in which two of the plurality of antennas are each configured to transmit one of a first space-time-channel-coded symbol stream and a second space-time-channel-coded symbol stream, the wireless spread spectrum mobile cellular phone comprising:

• a quadrature phase shift key (QPSK) mapper configured to receive input data;
• a first multiple trellis coded modulation (MTCM) encoder and QPSK mapper unit operatively coupled to the QPSK mapper;
• a first symbol selector and puncturer coupled to the first MTCM encoder and QPSK mapper unit, the first symbol selector and puncturer is configured to provide a first channel-coded symbol stream;
• a symbol interleaver operatively coupled to the QPSK mapper;
• a second MTCM encoder and QPSK mapper unit operatively coupled to the symbol interleaver;
• a symbol de-interleaver arrangement operatively coupled to the second MTCM encoder and QPSK mapper unit;
• a second symbol selector and puncturer operatively coupled to the symbol de-interleaver arrangment, the second symbol selector and puncturer being configured to provided a second channel-coded symbol stream;
• and
• a particular encoder operatively coupled to the first symbol selector and puncturer and to the second symbol selector and puncturer, the particular encoder being configured to receive the first channel-coded symbol stream and the second channel-coded symbol stream, the particular encoder providing space-time coding to the first channel-coded symbol stream and to the second channel-coded symbol stream, the particular encoder generating the first space-time-channel-coded symbol stream and the second space-time-channel-coded symbol stream,
• wherein the wireless spread spectrum mobile cellular phone supports voice communications, multimedia communications and navigational communications,
• wherein the wireless spread spectrum mobile cellular phone supports wireless communications with a wireless local area network,
• wherein the wireless spread spectrum mobile cellular phone supports e-mail communications, video conference communications and Internet communications,
• wherein at least the QPSK mapper, the first MTCM encoder and QPSK mapper unit, the second MTCM encoder and QPSK mapper unit and the particular encoder are part of an outer encoder and/or an inner encoder,
• wherein information transferred between the inner encoder and the outer encoder is evaluated to determine at least a number of turbo iterations, a stopping criteria, a symbol interleaver span and a symbol interleaver depth, and
• wherein the information transferred between the inner encoder and the outer encoder is evaluated using extrinsic information transfer (EXIT) chart based analysis.