The DMT classification of real and quaternionic lattice codes

Abstract: In this paper we consider space-time codes where the code-words are restricted to either real or quaternion matrices. We prove two separate diversity-multiplexing gain trade-off (DMT) upper bounds for such codes and provide a criterion for a lattice code to achieve these upper bounds. We also point out that lattice codes based on Q-central division algebras satisfy this optimality criterion. As a corollary this result provides a DMT classification for all Q-central division algebra codes that are based on standard embeddings.