Recently, space time block codes (STBCs) are proposed for multi-input and multi-output (MIMO) antenna systems. Designing an STBC with both low decoding complexity and non-vanishing property for the Long Term Evolution Advanced (LTE-A) remains an open issue. In this paper, first our previously proposed STBC’s non-vanishing property will be completely described. The proposed STBC scheme has some interesting properties: 1) the scheme can achieve full rate and full diversity;2) its maximum likelihood (ML) decoding requires a joint detection of three real symbols;3) the minimum determinant values (MDVs) do not vanish by increasing signal constellation sizes;4) compatible with the single antenna transmission mode. The sentence has been dropped. Second, in order to improve BER performance, we propose a variant of proposed STBC. This scheme further decreases the detection complexity with a rate reduction of 33%;moreover, non-vanishing MDVs property is preserved. The simulation results show the second proposed STBC has better BER performance compared with other schemes.