This paper deals with 2/sup l/-ary transmission using multilevel coding (MLC) and multistage decoding (MSD). The known result that MLC and MSD suffice to approach capacity if the rates at each level are appropriately chosen is reviewed. Using multiuser information theory, it is shown that there is a large space of rate combinations such that MLC and full maximum-likelihood decoding (MLD) can approach capacity. It is noted that multilevel codes designed according to the traditional balanced distance rule tend to fall in the latter category and, therefore, require the huge complexity of MLD. The capacity rule, the balanced distances rules, and two other rules based on the random coding exponent and cutoff rate are compared and contrasted for practical design. Simulation results using multilevel binary turbo codes show that capacity can in fact be closely approached at high bandwidth efficiencies. Moreover, topics relevant in practical applications such as signal set labeling, dimensionality of the constituent constellation, and hard-decision decoding are emphasized. Bit interleaved coded modulation, proposed by Caire et al. (see ibid., vol.44, p.927-46, 1998), is reviewed in the context of MLC. Finally, the combination of signal shaping and coding is discussed. Significant shaping gains are achievable in practice only if these design rules are taken into account.

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Multilevel codes: theoretical concepts and practical design rules

The recently proposed Turbo codes are applied to bandwidth efficient modulation schemes via multilevel coding. For this purpose, Turbo codes are extended for a wide range of fine tunable rates by puncturing. A straightforward derivation of iterative Turbo decoding and the concept of extrinsic information is presented. New design rules for multilevel codes with arbitrary component codes and codeword lengths are derived from information theory. Simulation results show that application of Turbo codes to properly designed multilevel coding schemes leads to digital transmission schemes with high power and bandwidth efficiency.

Power and bandwidth efficient digital communication using turbo codes in multilevel codes

The authors present coded 8-phase-shift-keyed (8-PSK) modulations for the Rayleigh fading channel. The schemes are based on multilevel trellis-coded-modulation constructions and utilize maximum free Hamming distance binary convolutional codes as building blocks. A suboptimal multistage decoder that utilizes interstage interleaving and iterative decoding is proposed and evaluated. Examples are constructed to show that the proposed schemes outperform the best modified codes of the Ungerboeck type due to significantly higher implicit time diversity, yielding seven branches of built-in time diversity, whereas the Ungerboeck code yields four branches of time diversity for a 64-state system. The transmission delay is higher, however. The new schemes can provide three levels of unequal error protection when 8-PSK or 8-differential-phase-shift-keying (8-DPSK) modulations are used. They provide 10-14-dB channel signal-to-noise ratio gain over uncoded 4-DPSK at a bit error rate of 10/sup -3/ for a modest decoding complexity. >

Multilevel trellis coded modulations for the Rayleigh fading channel

The multilevel coding technique is used for constructing multilevel trellis M-ary phase-shift-keying (MPSK) modulation codes for the Rayleigh fading channel. In the construction of a code, all the factors which affect the code performance and its decoding complexity are considered. The error performance of some of these codes based on both one-stage optimum decoding and multistage suboptimum decoding has been simulated. The simulation results show that these codes achieve good error performance with small decoding complexity. >

Multilevel trellis MPSK modulation codes for the Rayleigh fading channel

Multistage decoding of multilevel block multilevel phase-shift keying (M-PSK) modulation codes for the additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel is investigated. Several types of multistage decoding, including a suboptimum soft-decision decoding scheme, are devised and analyzed. Upper bounds on the probability of an incorrect decoding of a code are derived for the proposed multistage decoding schemes. Error probabilities of some specific multilevel block 8-PSK modulation codes are evaluated and simulated. The computation and simulation results for these codes show that with multistage decoding, significant coding gains can be achieved with large reduction in decoding complexity. In one example, it is shown that the difference in performance between the proposed suboptimum multistage soft-decision decoding and the single-stage optimum decoding is small, only a fraction of a dB loss in SNR at the block error probability of 10/sup -6/. >

T. Takata

Papers

Multistage decoding of multilevel block M-PSK modulation codes and its performance analysis

Error performance of multi-stage hard-decision bounded distance decoding for multi-level block modulation codes