Low Spectral Efficiency Trellis Coded Modulation Systems

Trellis-coded modulation (TCM) is a known technique to increase the data rate without increasing the channel bandwidth when implementing error correction coding. TCM is a combination of M-ary modulation and error correction coding. This thesis investigates the performance of a low spectral efficiency TCM system, which is compared with three alternative systems having comparable bandwidth. The three alternative systems are all non-TCM systems and consist of QPSK with independent r=1/2 error correction coding on the in-phase and quadrature components, 8-ary biorthogonal keying (8-BOK) with r=2/3 error correction coding, and 16-BOK with r=3/4 error correction coding. The effects of both additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and pulse-noise interference (PNI) are considered. The TCM system shows much better than expected performance and significant resistance to PNI, and performance improves as the number of memory element increases. The alternative QPSK system with soft decision decoding (SDD) experiences significant degradation with PNI. The 8-BOK with r=2/3 error correction and 16-BOK with r=3/4 error correction systems occupy approximately the same bandwidth as the TCM system and show better performance in PNI than the alternative QPSK system.

The performance of a communication system having almost the same spectral efficiency as a trellis coded modulation (TCM) system with r = 2/3 convolutional encoding and 8-ary phase-shift keying (8-PSK) modulation is investigated. TCM is a common solution to the problem of adding forward error correction (FEC) coding without an attendant increase in channel bandwidth. The primary drawback to TCM is that the achievable coding gain is limited by the maximum practical number of states in the convolutional encoder. The alternative system considered uses (63, 37) Reed-Solomon (RS) encoding. The six-bit symbols at the output of the Reed-Solomon encoder undergo serial-to-parallel conversion to two three-bit symbols, which are then independently transmitted on the in-phase (I) and quadrature (Q) component of the carrier using 8-ary biorthogonal keying (8-BOK). This system has a null-to-null bandwidth of 0.993Rb, which is 0.7% smaller than TCM with r = 2/3 convolutional encoding and 8-PSK modulation. The two waveforms are compared for the relatively benign case where additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) is the only noise present as well as when pulse-noise interference (PNI) is present. It was found that both systems have almost the same performance in AWGN, but with PNI the alternative system has better performance.

Turbo Trellis-Coded Modulation (TTCM) is an attractive scheme for higher data rate transmission, since it combines the impressive near Shannon limit error correcting ability of turbo codes with the high spectral efficiency property of TCM codes. We build a punctured parity-concatenated trellis codes in which a TCM code is used as the inner code and a simple parity-check code is used as the outer code. It can be constructed by simple repetition, interleavers, and TCM and functions as standard TTCM but with much lower complexity regarding real world implementation. An iterative bit MAP decoding algorithm is associated with the coding scheme.

Coded Modulation Systems is an introduction to the subject of coded modulation in digital communication. It is designed for classroom use and for anyone wanting to learn the ideas behind this modern kind of coding. Coded modulation is signal encoding that takes into account the nature of the channel over which it is used. Traditional error correcting codes work with bits and add redundant bits in order to correct transmission errors. In coded modulation, continuous time signals and their phases and amplitudes play the major role. The coding can be seen as a patterning of these quantities. The object is still to correct errors, but more fundamentally, it is to conserve signal energy and bandwidth at a given error performance. The book divides coded modulation into three major parts. Trellis coded modulation (TCM) schemes encode the points of QAM constellations; lattice coding and set-partition techniques play major roles here. Continuous-phase modulation (CPM) codes encode the signal phase, and create constant envelope RF signals. The partial-response signaling (PRS) field includes intersymbol interference problems, signals generated by real convolution, and signals created by lowpass filtering. In addition to these topics, the book covers coding techniques of several kinds for fading channels, spread spectrum and repeat-request systems. The history of the subject is fully traced back to the formative work of Shannon in 1949. Full explanation of the basics and complete homework problems make the book ideal for self-study or classroom use.

As the National Aeronautics and Space Administration moves into the 21st century with programs like Space Station Freedom, a manned mission to Mars, and the new Landsat mission, transmission demands on the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS) will very likely exceed the available bandwidth. The Manual Lujan, Jr. Center for Space Telemetering and Telecommunications Systems (CSTTS) at New Mexico State University (NMSU) is studying techniques for increasing the data rate capabilities of TDRSS. These techniques include the use of advanced bandwidth efficient modulation formats to increase the data rate that can be sustained in a TDRSS transponder and the use of lossless bandwidth compression of the data to be transmitted to lower the data rate required from the user spacecraft. Based upon current technology the most promising bandwidth efficient modulation technique is Trellis Coded Modulation (TCM) operating with Octal Phase shift Keying (8PSK). Trellis Coded Modulation coding with 8PSK carrier modulation has the capability to increase the data rate which can be transmitted through the TDRSS spacecraft by a factor of 2 to 2.5 times that available with todays coded QPSK systems with only a small penalty in link performance relative to the existing systems. However, before NASA can safely employ TCM coding it is necessary to prove that this complex format can perform on the real TDRSS link as it does in labs and simulation studies. This proof-of-concept test over a live satellite channel was the objective of the construction and testing performed under this task of the NMSU NASA grant referenced above. In conjunction with NASA, NMSU's CSTTS has constructed a system to test a new candidate TDRSS modulation scheme, TCM 8PSK, that can enhance the information throughput of the TDRSS spacecraft. The test system for this project which was constructed over a period of 18 months by NMSU consisted of two racks of commercial and univeristy-designed and -built equipment...

This new edition has been extensively revised to reflect the progress in error control coding over the past few years. Over 60% of the material has been completely reworked, and 30% of the material is original. Convolutional, turbo, and low density parity-check (LDPC) coding and polar codes in a unified framework Advanced research-related developments such as spatial coupling A focus on algorithmic and implementation aspects of error control coding