Self-concatenated code design and its application in power-efficient cooperative communications

In this tutorial, we have focused on the design of binary self-concatenated coding schemes with the help of EXtrinsic Information Transfer (EXIT) charts and Union bound analysis. The design methodology of future iteratively decoded self-concatenated aided cooperative communication schemes is presented. In doing so, we will identify the most important milestones in the area of channel coding, concatenated coding schemes and cooperative communication systems till date and suggest future research directions

Turbo space-time coded modulation : principle and performance analysis

A breakthrough in coding was achieved with the invention of turbo codes. Turbo codes approach Shannon capacity by displaying the properties of long random codes, yet allowing efficient decoding. Coding alone, however, cannot fully address the problem of multipath fading channel. Recent advances in information theory have revolutionized the traditional view of multipath channel as an impairment. New results show that high gains in capacity can be achieved through the use of multiple antennas at the transmitter and the receiver. To take advantage of these new results in information theory, it is necessary to devise methods that allow communication systems to operate close to the predicted capacity. One such method recently invented is space-time coding, which provides both coding gain and diversity advantage. In this dissertation, a new class of codes is proposed that extends the concept of turbo coding to include space-time encoders as constituent building blocks of turbo codes. The codes are referred to as turbo spacetime coded modulation (turbo-STCM). The motivation behind the turbo-STCM concept is to fuse the important properties of turbo and space-time codes into a unified design framework. A turbo-STCM encoder is proposed, which consists of two space-time codes in recursive systematic form concatenated in parallel. An iterative symbol-by-symbol maximum a posteriori algorithm operating in the log domain is developed for decoding turbo-STCM. The decoder employs two a posteriori probability (APP) computing modules concatenated in parallel; one module for each constituent code. The analysis of turbo-STCM is demonstrated through simulations and theoretical closed-form expressions. Simulation results are provided for 4-PSK and 8-PSK schemes over the Rayleigh block-fading channel. It is shown that the turbo-STCM scheme features full diversity and full coding rate. The significant gain can be obtained in performance over conventional space-time codes of similar complexity. The analytical union bound to the bit error probability is derived for turbo-STCM over the additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and the Rayleigh block-fading channels. The bound makes it possible to express the performance analysis of turbo-STCM in terms of the properties of the constituent space-time codes. The union bound is demonstrated for 4-PSK and 8-PSK turbo-STCM with two transmit antennas and one/two receive antennas. Information theoretic bounds such as Shannon capacity, cutoff rate, outage capacity and the Fano bound, are computed for multiantenna systems over the AWGN and fading channels. These bounds are subsequently used as benchmarks for demonstrating the performance of turbo-STCM

Turbo Codes Construction for Robust Hybrid Multitransmission Schemes

In certain applications the user has to cope with some random packet erasures due, e.g., to deep fading conditions on wireless links, or to congestion on wired networks. In other applications, the user has to cope with a pure wireless link, in which all packets are available to him, even if seriously corrupted. The ARQ/FEC schemes already studied and presented in the literature are well optimized only for one of these two applications. In a previous work, the authors aimed at bridging this gap, giving a design method for obtaining hybrid ARQ schemes that perform well in both conditions, i.e., at the presence of packet erasures and packet fading. This scheme uses a channel coding system based on partially-systematic periodically punctured turbo codes. Since the computation of the transfer function and, consequently, the union bound on the Bit or Frame Error Rate of a partiallysystematic punctured turbo code becomes highly intensive as the interleaver size and the puncturing period increase, in this work a simplified and more efficient method to calculate the most significant terms of the average distance spectrum of the turbo encoder is proposed and validated

Self-concatenated coding for wireless communication systems

In this thesis, we have explored self-concatenated coding schemes that are designed for transmission over Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) and uncorrelated Rayleigh fading channels. We designed both the symbol-based Self-ConcatenatedCodes considered using Trellis Coded Modulation (SECTCM) and bit-based Self- Concatenated Convolutional Codes (SECCC) using a Recursive Systematic Convolutional (RSC) encoder as constituent codes, respectively. The design of these codes was carried out with the aid of Extrinsic Information Transfer (EXIT) charts. The EXIT chart based design has been found an efficient tool in finding the decoding convergence threshold of the constituent codes. Additionally, in order to recover the information loss imposed by employing binary rather than non-binary schemes, a soft decision demapper was introduced in order to exchange extrinsic information withthe SECCC decoder. To analyse this information exchange 3D-EXIT chart analysis was invoked for visualizing the extrinsic information exchange between the proposed Iteratively Decoding aided SECCC and soft-decision demapper (SECCC-ID). Some of the proposed SECTCM, SECCC and SECCC-ID schemes perform within about 1 dB from the AWGN and Rayleigh fading channels’ capacity. A union bound analysis of SECCC codes was carried out to find the corresponding Bit Error Ratio (BER) floors. The union bound of SECCCs was derived for communications over both AWGN and uncorrelated Rayleigh fading channels, based on a novel interleaver concept.Application of SECCCs in both UltraWideBand (UWB) and state-of-the-art video-telephone schemes demonstrated its practical benefits.In order to further exploit the benefits of the low complexity design offered by SECCCs we explored their application in a distributed coding scheme designed for cooperative communications, where iterative detection is employed by exchanging extrinsic information between the decoders of SECCC and RSC at the destination. In the first transmission period of cooperation, the relay receives the potentially erroneous data and attempts to recover the information. The recovered information is then re-encoded at the relay using an RSC encoder. In the second transmission period this information is then retransmitted to the destination. The resultant symbols transmitted from the source and relay nodes can be viewed as the coded symbols of a three-component parallel-concatenated encoder. At the destination a Distributed Binary Self-Concatenated Coding scheme using Iterative Decoding (DSECCC-ID) was employed, where the two decoders (SECCC and RSC) exchange their extrinsic information. It was shown that the DSECCC-ID is a low-complexity scheme, yet capable of approaching the Discrete-input Continuous-output Memoryless Channels’s (DCMC) capacity.Finally, we considered coding schemes designed for two nodes communicating with each other with the aid of a relay node, where the relay receives information from the two nodes in the first transmission period. At the relay node we combine a powerful Superposition Coding (SPC) scheme with SECCC. It is assumed that decoding errors may be encountered at the relay node. The relay node then broadcasts this information in the second transmission period after re-encoding it, again, using a SECCC encoder. At the destination, the amalgamated block of Successive Interference Cancellation (SIC) scheme combined with SECCC then detects and decodes the signal either with or without the aid of a priori information. Our simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme is capable of reliably operating at a low BER for transmission over both AWGN and uncorrelated Rayleigh fading channels. We compare the proposed scheme’s performance to a direct transmission link between the two sources having the same throughput

Error control techniques for satellite and space communications

This report focuses on the results obtained during the PI's recent sabbatical leave at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, Switzerland, from January 1, 1995 through June 30, 1995. Two projects investigated various properties of TURBO codes, a new form of concatenated coding that achieves near channel capacity performance at moderate bit error rates. The performance of TURBO codes is explained in terms of the code's distance spectrum. These results explain both the near capacity performance of the TURBO codes and the observed 'error floor' for moderate and high signal-to-noise ratios (SNR's). A semester project, entitled 'The Realization of the Turbo-Coding System,' involved a thorough simulation study of the performance of TURBO codes and verified the results claimed by previous authors. A copy of the final report for this project is included as Appendix A. A diploma project, entitled 'On the Free Distance of Turbo Codes and Related Product Codes,' includes an analysis of TURBO codes and an explanation for their remarkable performance. A copy of the final report for this project is included as Appendix B

Hybrid ARQ with parallel and serial concatenated convolutional codes for next generation wireless communications

This research focuses on evaluating the currently used FEC encoding-decoding schemes and improving the performance of error control systems by incorporating these schemes in a hybrid FEC-ARQ environment. Beginning with an overview of wireless communications and the various ARQ protocols, the thesis provides an in-depth explanation of convolutional encoding and Viterbi decoding, turbo (PCCC) and serial concatenated convolutional (SCCC) encoding with their respective MAP decoding strategies.;A type-II hybrid ARQ scheme with SCCCs is proposed for the first time and is a major contribution of this thesis. A vast improvement is seen in the BER performance of the successive individual FEC schemes discussed above. Also, very high throughputs can be achieved when these schemes are incorporated in an adaptive type-II hybrid ARQ system.;Finally, the thesis discusses the equivalence of the PCCCs and the SCCCs and proposes a technique to generate a hybrid code using both schemes

Concatenated codes for the multiple-input multiple-output quasi-static fading channel

The use of multiple antennas at the transmitter and/or the receiver promises greatly increased capacity. This can be useful to meet the ever growing demand of wireless connectivity, provided we can find techniques to efficiently exploit the advantages of the Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) system. This work explores the MIMO system in a flat quasi-static fading scenario. Such a channel occurs, for example, in packet data systems, where the channel fade is constant for the duration of a codeword and changes independently from one transmission to another. We first show why it is hard to compute the true constrained modulation outage capacity. As an alternative, we present achievable lower bounds to this capacity based on existing space-time codes. The bounds we compute are the fundamental limits to the performance of these space-time codes under maximum-likelihood decoding, optimal outer codes and asymptotically long lengths. These bounds also indicate that MIMO systems have different behavior under Gaussian signaling (unconstrained input) and under the finite alphabet setting. Our results naturally suggest the use of concatenated codes to approach near-capacity performance. However, we show that a system utilizing an iterative decoder has a fundamental limit it cannot be universal and therefore it cannot perform arbitrarily close to its outage limit. Next, we propose two different transceiver structures that have good performance. The first structure is based on a novel BCJR-decision feedback decoder which results in performance within a dB of the outage limit. The second structure is based on recursive realizations of space-time trellis codes and uses iterative decoding at the receiver. This recursive structure has impressive performance even when the channel has time diversity. Thus, it forms the basis of a very flexible and robust MIMO transceiver structure