Differential Delay Mitigation in Multi-Antenna Aircraft Transmissions

In multi-antenna transmit diversity systems, accurate Channel State Information estimation is essential for reliable data decoding. In aeronautical telemetry, the spatial separation of antennas onboard aircraft, which can span several meters, introduces non negligible differential delays between received signals which degrades channel estimation, thereby impacting receiver performance. To address this issue, we propose a novel approach where both pilot sequences and transmitted data are Space-Time Block Coded to enhance CSI estimation by mitigating the degradation caused by differential delay. Thus leading to improved receiver robustness in multi-antenna aircraft telemetry. Simulation results demonstrate significantly better cross-correlation properties for the proposed pilot sequences over IRIG-106 ones. Complete communication system simulation using AWGN channel confirms that the new sequences provide gains in CSI estimation without computational complexity increase.