Studies in Error Correction Coding

For a proper understanding of the implementation of error correction coding schemes, a basic knowledge of communication channels and networks is necessary. Communication channels incur several types of errors, including noise and signal attenuation. Consequently, the benefits of a particular error control scheme are determined by the errors which occur most frequently. First, the types of transmissions across which errors occur will be considered. Subsequently, the types of errors that can appear during these transmissions and a short discussion of the cause of errors are necessary to understand the several types of errors that can occur. Afterward, the implementation of several major coding schemes will be discussed, including block codes, linear codes, and convolutional codes. Convolutional codes will specifically be discussed in terms of turbo codes and low-density parity check codes. Lastly, research of error correction coding schemes will involve several kinds of resources, including textbooks, journal articles, and technical publications. These resources will be used for the understanding of a practical implementation of an error correction coding scheme

A variable-rate modulation and coding scheme for low earth orbit satellites

Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites are increasingly being used for a wide variety of communications applications. These satellites have to operate in widely varying channel conditions. These conditions are often significantly better than the 'worst case' situations that are experienced and thus a single rate transmission scheme is clearly suboptimal. The objective of the thesis is to suggest and test a method of modulation/coding that can take advantage of better signal strength conditions in order to improve data transmission rates. In order to provide the goal of approximately 50kbps transmission in a 10kHz Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA) channel it was necessary to consider spectrally efficient, rather than power efficient, modulations. The proposed modulation scheme makes use of an eight-dimensional trellis coded modulation system. Multiple signal constellation sets are used in conjunction with this coding in order to provide different transmission rates, depending on the signal to noise ratio and the channel state. To enhance the suitability of the modulation scheme for the channel, it was combined with Reed-Solomon Coding and interleaving in an inner/outer code arrangement. Various means of determining when to switch between coding rates were discussed briefly, but an in-depth treatment of the subject fell outside of the scope of the thesis. Various combinations of these codes were tested in gaussian noise conditions and various degrees of Rician and Rayleigh fading. In order to make use of the higher rate QAM constellations, it was necessary to provide the decoder with channel state information. The tested system achieved its purpose of providing a variable rate coding scheme resulting in good performance over a range of channel conditions. It is fairly flexible and can be adapted to specific channel requirements

Unified turbo/LDPC code decoder architecture for deep-space communications

Deep-space communications are characterized by extremely critical conditions; current standards foresee the usage of both turbo and low-density-parity-check (LDPC) codes to ensure recovery from received errors, but each of them displays consistent drawbacks. Code concatenation is widely used in all kinds of communication to boost the error correction capabilities of single codes; serial concatenation of turbo and LDPC codes has been recently proven effective enough for deep space communications, being able to overcome the shortcomings of both code types. This work extends the performance analysis of this scheme and proposes a novel hardware decoder architecture for concatenated turbo and LDPC codes based on the same decoding algorithm. This choice leads to a high degree of datapath and memory sharing; postlayout implementation results obtained with complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) 90 nm technology show small area occupation (0.98 mm 2 ) and very low power consumption (2.1 mW)

Turbo codes and turbo algorithms

In the first part of this paper, several basic ideas that prompted the coming of turbo codes are commented on. We then present some personal points of view on the main advances obtained in past years on turbo coding and decoding such as the circular trellis termination of recursive systematic convolutional codes and double-binary turbo codes associated with Max-Log-MAP decoding. A novel evaluation method, called genieinitialised iterative processing (GIIP), is introduced to assess the error performance of iterative processing. We show that using GIIP produces a result that can be viewed as a lower bound of the maximum likelihood iterative decoding and detection performance. Finally, two wireless communication systems are presented to illustrate recent applications of the turbo principle, the first one being multiple-input/multiple-output channel iterative detection and the second one multi-carrier modulation with linear precoding

Design of a simulation platform to test next generation of terrestrial DVB

Digital Terrestrial Television Broadcasting (DTTB) is a member of our daily life routine, and nonetheless, according to new users’ necessities in the fields of communications and leisure, new challenges are coming up. Moreover, the current Standard is not able to satisfy all the potential requirements. For that reason, first of all, a review of the current Standard has been performed within this work. Then, it has been identified the needing of developing a new version of the standard, ready to support enhanced services, as for example broadcasting transmissions to moving terminals or High Definition Television (HDTV) transmissions, among others. The main objective of this project is the design and development of a physical layer simulator of the whole DVB-T standard, including both the complete transmission and reception procedures. The simulator has been developed in Matlab. A detailed description of the simulator both from a functional and an architectural point of view is included. The simulator is the base for testing any possible modifications that may be included into the DVB-T2 future standard. In fact, several proposed enhancements have already been carried out and their performance has been evaluated. Specifically, the use of higher order modulation schemes, and the corresponding modifications in all the system blocks, have been included and evaluated. Furthermore, the simulator will allow testing other enhancements as the use of more efficient encoders and interleavers, MIMO technologies, and so on. A complete set of numerical results showing the performance of the different parts of the system, are presented in order to validate the correctness of the implementation and to evaluate both the current standard performance and the proposed enhancements. This work has been performed within the context of a project called FURIA, which is a strategic research project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Commerce. A brief description of this project and its consortium has been also included herein, together with an introduction to the current situation of the DTTB in Spain (called TDT in Spanish)

Design of a simulation platform to test next generation of terrestrial DVB

Digital Terrestrial Television Broadcasting (DTTB) is a member of our daily life routine, and nonetheless, according to new users’ necessities in the fields of communications and leisure, new challenges are coming up. Moreover, the current Standard is not able to satisfy all the potential requirements. For that reason, first of all, a review of the current Standard has been performed within this work. Then, it has been identified the needing of developing a new version of the standard, ready to support enhanced services, as for example broadcasting transmissions to moving terminals or High Definition Television (HDTV) transmissions, among others. The main objective of this project is the design and development of a physical layer simulator of the whole DVB-T standard, including both the complete transmission and reception procedures. The simulator has been developed in Matlab. A detailed description of the simulator both from a functional and an architectural point of view is included. The simulator is the base for testing any possible modifications that may be included into the DVB-T2 future standard. In fact, several proposed enhancements have already been carried out and their performance has been evaluated. Specifically, the use of higher order modulation schemes, and the corresponding modifications in all the system blocks, have been included and evaluated. Furthermore, the simulator will allow testing other enhancements as the use of more efficient encoders and interleavers, MIMO technologies, and so on. A complete set of numerical results showing the performance of the different parts of the system, are presented in order to validate the correctness of the implementation and to evaluate both the current standard performance and the proposed enhancements. This work has been performed within the context of a project called FURIA, which is a strategic research project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Commerce. A brief description of this project and its consortium has been also included herein, together with an introduction to the current situation of the DTTB in Spain (called TDT in Spanish)

Error-correction coding for high-density magnetic recording channels.

Finally, a promising algorithm which combines RS decoding algorithm with LDPC decoding algorithm together is investigated, and a reduced-complexity modification has been proposed, which not only improves the decoding performance largely, but also guarantees a good performance in high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), in which area an error floor is experienced by LDPC codes.The soft-decision RS decoding algorithms and their performance on magnetic recording channels have been researched, and the algorithm implementation and hardware architecture issues have been discussed. Several novel variations of KV algorithm such as soft Chase algorithm, re-encoded Chase algorithm and forward recursive algorithm have been proposed. And the performance of nested codes using RS and LDPC codes as component codes have been investigated for bursty noise magnetic recording channels.Future high density magnetic recoding channels (MRCs) are subject to more noise contamination and intersymbol interference, which make the error-correction codes (ECCs) become more important. Recent research of replacement of current Reed-Solomon (RS)-coded ECC systems with low-density parity-check (LDPC)-coded ECC systems obtains a lot of research attention due to the large decoding gain for LDPC-coded systems with random noise. In this dissertation, systems aim to maintain the RS-coded system using recent proposed soft-decision RS decoding techniques are investigated and the improved performance is presented