ON TURBO CODES AND OTHER CONCATENATED SCHEMES IN COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS

The advent of turbo codes in 1993 represented a significant step towards realising the ultimate capacity limit of a communication channel, breaking the link that was binding very good performance with exponential decoder complexity. Turbo codes are parallel concatenated convolutional codes, decoded with a suboptimal iterative algorithm. The complexity of the iterative algorithm increases only linearly with block length, bringing previously unprecedented performance within practical limits.. This work is a further investigation of turbo codes and other concatenated schemes such as the multiple parallel concatenation and the serial concatenation. The analysis of these schemes has two important aspects, their performance under optimal decoding and the convergence of their iterative, suboptimal decoding algorithm. The connection between iterative decoding performance and the optimal decoding performance is analysed with the help of computer simulation by studying the iterative decoding error events. Methods for good performance interleaver design and code design are presented and analysed in the same way. The optimal decoding performance is further investigated by using a novel method to determine the weight spectra of turbo codes by using the turbo code tree representation, and the results are compared with the results of the iterative decoder. The method can also be used for the analysis of multiple parallel concatenated codes, but is impractical for the serial concatenated codes. Non-optimal, non-iterative decoding algorithms are presented and compared with the iterative algorithm. The convergence of the iterative algorithm is investigated by using the Cauchy criterion. Some insight into the performance of the concatenated schemes under iterative decoding is found by separating error events into convergent and non-convergent components. The sensitivity of convergence to the Eb/Ng operating point has been explored.SateUite Research Centre Department of Communication and Electronic Engineerin

Performance Comparison of Latency for RSC-RSC and RS-RSC Concatenated Codes

In this paper, we compare the latency of serially concatenated convolutional codes. In particular, we compare RSC-RSC   concatenated codes using non-iterative concatenated Viterbi decoding to RS-RSC concatenated codes using concatenation of Viterbi & Berklelamp-Massey decoding. We have also used puncturing to obtain different code rates & analyzed the effect of code rate on latency. On the basis of simulations, it is shown that RSC-RSC code is better than RS-RSC codes for low latency applications. It is also shown that a trade-off is needed between BER & latency for concatenated codes

Soft-decision decoding techniques for linear block codes and their error performance analysis

The first paper presents a new minimum-weight trellis-based soft-decision iterative decoding algorithm for binary linear block codes. The second paper derives an upper bound on the probability of block error for multilevel concatenated codes (MLCC). The bound evaluates difference in performance for different decompositions of some codes. The third paper investigates the bit error probability code for maximum likelihood decoding of binary linear codes. The fourth and final paper included in this report is concerns itself with the construction of multilevel concatenated block modulation codes using a multilevel concatenation scheme for the frequency non-selective Rayleigh fading channel

Soft-output decoding algorithms in iterative decoding of turbo codes

In this article, we present two versions of a simplified maximum a posteriori decoding algorithm. The algorithms work in a sliding window form, like the Viterbi algorithm, and can thus be used to decode continuously transmitted sequences obtained by parallel concatenated codes, without requiring code trellis termination. A heuristic explanation is also given of how to embed the maximum a posteriori algorithms into the iterative decoding of parallel concatenated codes (turbo codes). The performances of the two algorithms are compared on the basis of a powerful rate 1/3 parallel concatenated code. Basic circuits to implement the simplified a posteriori decoding algorithm using lookup tables, and two further approximations (linear and threshold), with a very small penalty, to eliminate the need for lookup tables are proposed

Enhancement the Performance of OFDM based on Multiwavelets Using Turbo Codes

In wireless communication systems, the main challenge is to provide a high data rate and reliable transmission over a frequency selective fading channel. Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) is a very attractive technique for high data rate transmission with better bandwidth efficiency. In this paper, the effectiveness of turbo codes is utilized to develop a new approach for an OFDM system based on a Discrete Multiwavelet Critical-Sampling Transform (OFDM-DMWCST). The use of turbo coding in an OFDM-DMWCST system is useful in providing the desired performance at higher data rates. Two types of turbo codes were used in this work, i.e., Parallel Concatenated Convolutional Codes (PCCCs) and Serial Concatenated Convolutional Codes (SCCCs). In both types, the decoding is performed by the iterative decoding algorithm based on the log-MAP (Maximum A Posteriori) algorithm. The simulationresults showed that, the turbo-coded OFDM-DMWCST system achieves large coding gain with lower Bit-Error-Rate (BER), therefore, offering a higher data rate under different channel conditions. In addition, thePCCCs offer better performance than SCCCs

Serially Concatenated Coded Continuous Phase Modulation for Aeronautical Telemetry

This thesis treats the development of bandwidth-efficient serially concatenated coded (SCC) continuous phase modulation (CPM) techniques for aeronautical telemetry. The concatenated code consists of an inner and an outer code, separated by an interleaver in most configurations, and is decoded using relatively simple near-optimum iterative decoding algorithms. CPM waveforms such as shaped-offset quadrature phase shift keying (SOQPSK) and pulse code modulation/frequency modulation (PCM/FM), which are currently used in military satellite and aeronautical telemetry standards, can be viewed as inner codes due to their recursive nature. For the outer codes, this thesis applies serially concatenated convolutional codes (SCCC), turbo-product codes (TPC) and repeat-accumulate codes (RAC) because of their large coding gains, high code rates, and because their decoding algorithms are readily implemented. High-rate codes are of special interest in aeronautical telemetry applications due to recent reductions in available spectrum and ever-increasing demands on data rates. This thesis evaluates the proposed coding schemes with a large set of numerical simulation results and makes a number of recommendations based on these results

Iterative decoding for MIMO channels via modified sphere decoding

In recent years, soft iterative decoding techniques have been shown to greatly improve the bit error rate performance of various communication systems. For multiantenna systems employing space-time codes, however, it is not clear what is the best way to obtain the soft information required of the iterative scheme with low complexity. In this paper, we propose a modification of the Fincke-Pohst (sphere decoding) algorithm to estimate the maximum a posteriori probability of the received symbol sequence. The new algorithm solves a nonlinear integer least squares problem and, over a wide range of rates and signal-to-noise ratios, has polynomial-time complexity. Performance of the algorithm, combined with convolutional, turbo, and low-density parity check codes, is demonstrated on several multiantenna channels. The results for systems that employ space-time modulation schemes seem to indicate that the best performing schemes are those that support the highest mutual information between the transmitted and received signals, rather than the best diversity gain