The invention relates to space-time coding for communication systems. There is provided a method of generating a space-time block code (STBC) for encoding a digital data sequence comprising a set of independent symbols to be transmitted through a transmission channel in a communication system, the space-time block code being represented by a set of linear dispersion matrices in a linear dispersionrepresentation, each linear dispersion matrix comprising components having complex values, the method comprising, generating at least some of the linear dispersion matrices depending on component-wise conditions related to a set of selected pairs of the linear dispersion matrices, each pair comprising a first linear dispersion matrix and a second linear dispersion matrix, said component-wise conditions comprising a component-wise condition between the components of the first linear dispersion matrix and the components of the second linear dispersion matrix.