Provision of QoS in Wireless Networks Based on Multirate Multipath-Transparent Space-Time Block Coding

| In wireless networks, the provision of QoS guarantees needs to address the limited capacity of the physical medium. Such an objective calls for the joint design and integration of the network layer, medium access control, and physical layer. Supporting Integrated Services at the network layer demands a multi-rate transmission scheme at the physical layer, whereas achieving high data throughput and low bit error rates (BERs) at the data link layer requires a physical layer capable of exploiting all available forms of diversity. In this work, we develop a wireless framework capable of providing QoS guarantees, which is based on a multirate multipath-transparent spacetime block coding physical layer. We describe our novel space-time code assignment procedure (which is capable of supporting rates of arbitrarily ne resolution), and through simulations we illustrate the BER improvements which result from multiple transmit antennas.