Low-Complexity Demapping Algorithm for Two-Dimensional Non-Uniform Constellations

"(c) 2015 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other users, including reprinting/ republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted components of this work in other works.")Non-uniform constellations (NUCs) have been recently introduced in digital broadcasting systems to close the remaining gap to the unconstrained Shannon theoretical limit. Compared to uniform quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) constellations, NUCs provide a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) gain (i.e., a reduction in the required SNR), especially for high-order constellations. One-dimensional NUCs (1D-NUC) have a squared shape with non-uniform distance between the constellation symbols. Since the I and Q components remain as two independent signals, a 1D-demapper as for uniform QAM constellations is feasible. Two-dimensional NUCs (2D-NUC) provide a better performance than 1D-NUCs, since they are designed by relaxing the square shape constraint, with arbitrary shape along the complex plane. However, the main drawback of 2D-NUCs is the higher complexity at the receiver, since a 2D-demapper is needed. In this paper, we propose a demapping algorithm that reduces from 69% to 93% the number of required distances when using 2D-NUCs. The algorithm discards or replicates those constellation symbols that provide scarce information, with a performance degradation lower to 0.1 dB compared to the optimal maximum likelihood demapper.Fuentes Muela, M.; Vargas, D.; Gómez Barquero, D. (2016). Low-Complexity Demapping Algorithm for Two-Dimensional Non-Uniform Constellations. IEEE Transactions on Broadcasting. 62(2):375-383. doi:10.1109/TBC.2015.2492477S37538362

Constellation Shaping for WDM systems using 256QAM/1024QAM with Probabilistic Optimization

In this paper, probabilistic shaping is numerically and experimentally investigated for increasing the transmission reach of wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) optical communication system employing quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM). An optimized probability mass function (PMF) of the QAM symbols is first found from a modified Blahut-Arimoto algorithm for the optical channel. A turbo coded bit interleaved coded modulation system is then applied, which relies on many-to-one labeling to achieve the desired PMF, thereby achieving shaping gain. Pilot symbols at rate at most 2% are used for synchronization and equalization, making it possible to receive input constellations as large as 1024QAM. The system is evaluated experimentally on a 10 GBaud, 5 channels WDM setup. The maximum system reach is increased w.r.t. standard 1024QAM by 20% at input data rate of 4.65 bits/symbol and up to 75% at 5.46 bits/symbol. It is shown that rate adaptation does not require changing of the modulation format. The performance of the proposed 1024QAM shaped system is validated on all 5 channels of the WDM signal for selected distances and rates. Finally, it was shown via EXIT charts and BER analysis that iterative demapping, while generally beneficial to the system, is not a requirement for achieving the shaping gain.Comment: 10 pages, 12 figures, Journal of Lightwave Technology, 201

On Low Complexity Detection for QAM Isomorphic Constellations

Despite of the known gap from the Shannon's capacity, several standards are still employing QAM or star shape constellations, mainly due to the existing low complexity detectors. In this paper, we investigate the low complexity detection for a family of QAM isomorphic constellations. These constellations are known to perform very close to the peak-power limited capacity, outperforming the DVB-S2X standard constellations. The proposed strategy is to first remap the received signals to the QAM constellation using the existing isomorphism and then break the log likelihood ratio computations to two one dimensional PAM constellations. Gains larger than 0.6 dB with respect to QAM can be obtained over the peak power limited channels without any increase in detection complexity. Our scheme also provides a systematic way to design constellations with low complexity one dimensional detectors. Several open problems are discussed at the end of the paper.Comment: Submitted to IEEE GLOBECOM 201

Optimization and Performance of Non-Uniform Rotated Constellations With Multi-RF Transmission Technique

"(c) 2016 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other users, including reprinting/ republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted components of this work in other works.")Non-Uniform Constellations (NUC) have been introduced in ATSC 3.0 (Advanced Television Systems Committee - Third Generation) as one of the main novelties to improve the performance compared to uniform Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) constellations. NUCs are optimized by means of signal geometrical shaping, considering the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and the channel model. ATSC 3.0 implements two types of NUC, depending on the number of real-valued dimensions in which they are optimized: 1D-NUC and 2D-NUC. However, the gain of NUCs becomes almost non-existent at high SNRs, especially when optimizing for fading channels. In that particular case, Rotated Constellations (RC) can be used to further improve the overall system performance. RCs may become especially effective when using multi-radio frequency (multi-RF) SNR averaging techniques such as Channel Bonding (CB) or Time-Frequency Slicing (TFS), where in-phase (I) and quadrature (Q) components are transmitted in different RF channels. 2D-NUCs can be rotated without increasing the demapping complexity, since a 2D-demapper is also needed. In this paper, we propose an optimization method designed for rotated 2D-NUCs, in which the rotation angle is considered as an additional variable, together with the symbol positions. The SNR gain obtained in fading channels is also provided for three different use cases: single-RF transmissions, CB with 2 RF channels as adopted in ATSC 3.0, and extension of multi-RF techniques to 4 RF channels.This work was supported by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness of Spain, through the European FEDER Fund under Grant TEC2014-56483-R.Fuentes Muela, M.; Giménez Gandia, JJ.; Gómez Barquero, D. (2016). Optimization and Performance of Non-Uniform Rotated Constellations With Multi-RF Transmission Technique. IEEE Transactions on Broadcasting. 62(4):855-863. https://doi.org/10.1109/TBC.2016.2576601S85586362