Digital Communications BER Performance in AWGN and Fading (Convolutional Coding)

Abstract

This chapter presents topics in Simulink incorporating convolutional error control coding in an additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and fading channel. Specific topics include: bit error rate (BER) performance of convolutional coding and binary Phase‐Shift Keying (BPSK) in AWGN; BER performance of convolutional coding and BPSK in AWGN and Rayleigh fading with interleaving; and BER performance of convolutional coding, BPSK and Alamouti space‐time block coding (STBC) in Rayleigh fading with interleaving. The BPSK demodulator is followed by a maximum likelihood decoder using the Viterbi algorithm (VA) where hard‐decision decoding is selected. Simulink implements the convolutional encoder and decoder by means of a trellis structure for the generator polynomial with a specified constraint length and feedback taps given in octal. The theoretical performance for hard decision decoding of a convolutional code with a Viterbi decoder is available for comparison with simulation results.