Exploiting diversity in wireless channels with bit-interleaved coded modulation and iterative decoding (BICM-ID)

This dissertation studies a state-of-the-art bandwidth-efficient coded modulation technique, known as bit interleaved coded modulation with iterative decoding (BICM-ID), together with various diversity techniques to dramatically improve the performance of digital communication systems over wireless channels. For BICM-ID over a single-antenna frequency non-selective fading channel, the problem of mapping over multiple symbols, i.e., multi-dimensional (multi-D) mapping, with 8-PSK constellation is investigated. An explicit algorithm to construct a good multi-D mapping of 8-PSK to improve the asymptotic performance of BICM-ID systems is introduced. By comparing the performance of the proposed mapping with an unachievable lower bound, it is conjectured that the proposed mapping is the global optimal mapping. The superiority of the proposed mapping over the best conventional (1-dimensional complex) mapping and the multi-D mapping found previously by computer search is thoroughly demonstrated. In addition to the mapping issue in single-antenna BICM-ID systems, the use of signal space diversity (SSD), also known as linear constellation precoding (LCP), is considered in BICM-ID over frequency non-selective fading channels. The performance analysis of BICM-ID and complex N-dimensional signal space diversity is carried out to study its performance limitation, the choice of the rotation matrix and the design of a low-complexity receiver. Based on the design criterion obtained from a tight error bound, the optimality of the rotation matrix is established. It is shown that using the class of optimal rotation matrices, the performance of BICM-ID systems over a frequency non-selective Rayleigh fading channel approaches that of the BICM-ID systems over an additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel when the dimension of the signal constellation increases. Furthermore, by exploiting the sigma mapping for any M-ary quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) constellation, a very simple sub-optimal, yet effective iterative receiver structure suitable for signal constellations with large dimensions is proposed. Simulation results in various cases and conditions indicate that the proposed receiver can achieve the analytical performance bounds with low complexity. The application of BICM-ID with SSD is then extended to the case of cascaded Rayleigh fading, which is more suitable to model mobile-to-mobile communication channels. By deriving the error bound on the asymptotic performance, it is first illustrated that for a small modulation constellation, a cascaded Rayleigh fading causes a much more severe performance degradation than a conventional Rayleigh fading. However, BICM-ID employing SSD with a sufficiently large constellation can close the performance gap between the Rayleigh and cascaded Rayleigh fading channels, and their performance can closely approach that over an AWGN channel. In the next step, the use of SSD in BICM-ID over frequency selective Rayleigh fading channels employing a multi-carrier modulation technique known as orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is studied. Under the assumption of correlated fading over subcarriers, a tight bound on the asymptotic error performance for the general case of applying SSD over all N subcarriers is derived and used to establish the best achievable asymptotic performance by SSD. It is then shown that precoding over subgroups of at least L subcarriers per group, where L is the number of channel taps, is sufficient to obtain this best asymptotic error performance, while significantly reducing the receiver complexity. The optimal joint subcarrier grouping and rotation matrix design is subsequently determined by solving the Vandermonde linear system. Illustrative examples show a good agreement between various analytical and simulation results. Further, by combining the ideas of multi-D mapping and subcarrier grouping, a novel power and bandwidth-efficient bit-interleaved coded modulation with OFDM and iterative decoding (BI-COFDM-ID) in which multi-D mapping is performed over a group of subcarriers for broadband transmission in a frequency selective fading environment is proposed. A tight bound on the asymptotic error performance is developed, which shows that subcarrier mapping and grouping have independent impacts on the overall error performance, and hence they can be independently optimized. Specifically, it is demonstrated that the optimal subcarrier mapping is similar to the optimal multi-D mapping for BICM-ID in frequency non-selective Rayleigh fading environment, whereas the optimal subcarrier grouping is the same with that of OFDM with SSD. Furthermore, analytical and simulation results show that the proposed system with the combined optimal subcarrier mapping and grouping can achieve the full channel diversity without using SSD and provide significant coding gains as compared to the previously studied BI-COFDM-ID with the same power, bandwidth and receiver complexity. Finally, the investigation is extended to the application of BICM-ID over a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system equipped with multiple antennas at both the transmitter and the receiver to exploit both time and spatial diversities, where neither the transmitter nor the receiver knows the channel fading coefficients. The concentration is on the class of unitary constellation, due to its advantages in terms of both information-theoretic capacity and error probability. The tight error bound with respect to the asymptotic performance is also derived for any given unitary constellation and mapping rule. Design criteria regarding the choice of unitary constellation and mapping are then established. Furthermore, by using the unitary constellation obtained from orthogonal design with quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK or 4-PSK) and 8-PSK, two different mapping rules are proposed. The first mapping rule gives the most suitable mapping for systems that do not implement iterative processing, which is similar to a Gray mapping in coherent channels. The second mapping rule yields the best mapping for systems with iterative decoding. Analytical and simulation results show that with the proposed mappings of the unitary constellations obtained from orthogonal designs, the asymptotic error performance of the iterative systems can closely approach a lower bound which is applicable to any unitary constellation and mapping

Relay-Induced Error Propagation Reduction for Decode-and-Forward Cooperative Communications

An attractive hybrid method of mitigating the effects of error propagation that may be imposed by the relay node (RN) on the destination node (DN) is proposed. We selected the most appropriate relay location for achieving a specific target Bit Error Ratio (BER) at the relay and signalled the RN-BER to the DN. The knowledge of this BER was then exploited by the decoder at the destination. Our simulation results show that when the BER at the RN is low, we do not have to activate the RN-BER aided decoder at the DN. However, when the RN-BER is high, significant system performance improvements may be achieved by activating the proposed RN-BER based decoding technique at the DN. For example, a power-reduction of up to about 19dB was recorded at a DN BER of 10-4

On the Convergence Speed of Turbo Demodulation with Turbo Decoding

Iterative processing is widely adopted nowadays in modern wireless receivers for advanced channel codes like turbo and LDPC codes. Extension of this principle with an additional iterative feedback loop to the demapping function has proven to provide substantial error performance gain. However, the adoption of iterative demodulation with turbo decoding is constrained by the additional implied implementation complexity, heavily impacting latency and power consumption. In this paper, we analyze the convergence speed of these combined two iterative processes in order to determine the exact required number of iterations at each level. Extrinsic information transfer (EXIT) charts are used for a thorough analysis at different modulation orders and code rates. An original iteration scheduling is proposed reducing two demapping iterations with reasonable performance loss of less than 0.15 dB. Analyzing and normalizing the computational and memory access complexity, which directly impact latency and power consumption, demonstrates the considerable gains of the proposed scheduling and the promising contributions of the proposed analysis.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing on April 27, 201

Iterative Detection of Diagonal Block Space Time Trellis Codes, TCM and Reversible Variable Length Codes for Transmission over Rayleigh Fading Channels

Iterative detection of Diagonal Block Space Time Trellis Codes (DBSTTCs), Trellis Coded Modulation (TCM) and Reversible Variable Length Codes (RVLCs) is proposed. With the aid of efficient iterative decoding, the proposed scheme is capable of providing full transmit diversity and a near channel capacity performance. The performance of the proposed scheme was evaluated when communicating over uncorrelated Rayleigh fading channels. Explicitly, significant iteration gains were achieved by the proposed scheme, which was capable of performing within 2~dB from the channel capacity

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

Burst-by-Burst Adaptive Decision Feedback Equalised TCM, TTCM and BICM for H.263-Assisted Wireless Video Telephony

Decision Feedback Equaliser (DFE) aided wideband Burst-by-Burst (BbB) Adaptive Trellis Coded Modulation (TCM), Turbo Trellis Coded Modulation (TTCM) and Bit-Interleaved Coded Modulation (BICM) assisted H.263-based video transceivers are proposed and characterised in performance terms when communicating over the COST 207 Typical Urban wideband fading channel. Specifically, four different modulation modes, namely 4QAM, 8PSK, 16QAM and 64QAM are invoked and protected by the above-mentioned coded modulation schemes. The TTCM assisted scheme was found to provide the best video performance, although at the cost of the highest complexity. A range of lower-complexity arrangements will also be characterised. Finally, in order to confirm these findings in an important practical environment, we have also investigated the adaptive TTCM scheme in the CDMA-based Universal Mobile Telecommunications System's (UMTS) Terrestrial Radio Access (UTRA) scenario and the good performance of adaptive TTCM scheme recorded when communicating over the COST 207 channels was retained in the UTRA environment

TCM, TTCM, BICM and BICM-ID Assisted MMSE Multi-User Detected SDMA-OFDM Using Walsh-Hadamard Spreading

Space Division Multiple Access (SDMA) aided Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) systems assisted by efficient Multi-User Detection (MUD) techniques have recently attracted intensive research interests. Forward Error Correction (FEC) schemes and frequency-domain spreading techniques can be efficiently amalgamated with SDMA-OFDM systems for the sake of improving the achievable performance. In this contribution a Coded Modulation (CM) assisted and Minimum Mean-Square Error (MMSE) multi-user detected SDMA-OFDM system combined with Walsh-Hadamard-Transform-Spreading (WHTS) across a number of subcarriers is proposed. The various CM schemes used are Trellis Coded Modulation (TCM), Turbo TCM (TTCM), Bit-Interleaved Coded Modulation (BICM) and Iteratively Decoded BICM (BICM-ID), which constitute bandwidth efficient schemes that combine the functions of coding and modulation. Invoking the WHTS technique is capable of further improving the average Bit Error Rate (BER) performance of the CM-SDMA-OFDM system, since the bursty error effects imposed by the frequency-domain fading encountered are spread over the entire WHT block length, therefore increasing the chances of correcting the transmission errors by the CM decoders

Labeling Diversity for 2x2 WLAN Coded-Cooperative Networks

Labelling diversity is an efficient technique recently proposed in the literature and aims to improve the bit error rate(BER) performance of wireless local area network (WLAN) systems with two transmit and two receive antennas without increasing the transmit power and bandwidth requirements. In this paper, we employ labelling diversity with different space-time channel codes such as convolutional, turbo and low density parity check (LDPC) for both point-to-point and coded-cooperative communication scenarios. Joint iterative decoding schemes for distributed turbo and LDPC codes are also presented. BER performance bounds at an error floor (EF) region are derived and verified with the help of numerical simulations for both cooperative and non-cooperative schemes. Numerical simulations show that the coded-cooperative schemes with labelling diversity achieve better BER performances and use of labelling diversity at the source node significantly lowers relay outage probability and hence the overall BER performance of the coded-cooperative scheme is improved manifolds

Near-Capacity Turbo Trellis Coded Modulation Design

Bandwidth efficient parallel-concatenated Turbo Trellis Coded Modulation (TTCM) schemes were designed for communicating over uncorrelated Rayleigh fading channels. A symbol-based union bound was derived for analysing the error floor of the proposed TTCM schemes. A pair of In-phase (I) and Quadrature-phase (Q) interleavers were employed for interleaving the I and Q components of the TTCM coded symbols, in order to attain an increased diversity gain. The decoding convergence of the IQ-TTCM schemes was analysed using symbol based EXtrinsic Information Transfer (EXIT) charts. The best TTCM component codes were selected with the aid of both the symbol-based union bound and non-binary EXIT charts for the sake of designing capacity-approaching IQ-TTCM schemes in the context of 8PSK, 16QAM and 32QAM signal sets. It will be shown that our TTCM design is capable of approaching the channel capacity within 0.5 dB at a throughput of 4 bit/s/Hz, when communicating over uncorrelated Rayleigh fading channels using 32QAM