A new scheme integrating variable-rate channel coding with the multilayered space-time trellis codes (ML-STTC), is proposed to compensate for the performance loss due to the limited diversity gain of the firstly-detected layer in the group interference suppression and cancellation algorithm at the receiver. In the proposed scheme, the code rate of the channel coding in each layer is adaptive to the diversity gain of this layer, with intent to guarantee the performance of the first layer which suffers from diversity loss. In this way, the error propagation is reduced and the overall performance is improved.