160 IEEE JOURNAL ON SELECTED AREAS IN COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 16, NO.
2, FEBRUARY 1998
Design and Analysis of Turbo
Codes on Rayleigh Fading Channels
Eric K. Hall and Stephen G. Wilson, Member, IEEE
Abstract— The performance and design of turbo codes using
coherent BPSK signaling on the Rayleigh fading channel is con-
sidered. In low signal-to-noise regions, performance analysis uses
simulations of typical turbo coding systems. For higher signal-
to-noise regions beyond simulation capabilities, an average upper
bound is used in which the average is over all possible interleaving
schemes. Fully interleaved and exponentially correlated Rayleigh
channels are explored. Furthermore, the design issues relevant
to turbo codes are examined for the correlated fading channel.
Turbo interleaver design criteria are developed and architectural
modifications are proposed for improved performance.
Index Terms— Codes, concatenated coding, fading channels,
interleaved coding, Rayleigh channels.
I. INTRODUCTION
F OR wireless applications on fading channels, channel
coding is an important tool for improving communications
reliability. Turbo codes, introduced in [1], have been shown to
perform near the capacity limit on the additive white Gaussian
noise (AWGN) channel. As a powerful coding technique,
turbo codes offer great promise for improving the reliability
of communications over wireless channels where fading is
problematic. To date, only limited attention has been given
to the performance of turbo codes on fading channels [2], [3].
In this work, we explore both the performance and design
of turbo codes for fully interleaved channels and correlated
Rayleigh slow-fading channels.
The organization of the paper includes a brief overview of
turbo codes followed by a discussion of the channel model. We
then proceed to discuss the turbo code average upper bounding
technique along with an examination of two-codeword prob-
ability bounds on correlated and independent Rayleigh fading
channels. Simulation results are then presented for typical
turbo schemes, followed by the results and conclusions from
our simulations and the average bound. We conclude with an
examination of the design of turbo codes on correlated fading
channels.
II. SYSTEM MODEL
Turbo codes, introduced in [1], are, in essence, parallel
concatenated convolutional codes (PCCC). The turbo en-
Manuscript received October 1996; revised April 25, 1997. This work was
sponsored by the National Science Foundation under Grant NCR-9415996
and NASA/LeRC under Contract NAG3-1948. This paper was presented in
part at CISS’96, Princeton, NJ, March 1996 and the 6th Mini-Conference on
Communications in conjunction with IEEE GLOBECOM’96, London, U.K.,
November 1996
The authors are with the Department of Electrical Engineering, University
of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22903 USA.
Publisher Item Identifier S 0733-8716(98)00164-4.
0733–8716/98$10.00  1998 IEEE
coder is constructed from simple recursive systematic convo-
lutional (RSC) encoders connected in parallel and separated
by interleavers. The decoder uses an iterative, suboptimal,
soft-decoding rule where each constituent RSC is decoded
separately. The constituent decoders then participate in sharing
of bit-likelihood information in an iterative fashion. The
constituent decoders traditionally use the BCJR algorithm [4],
which is a MAP symbol decoding algorithm for block and
convolutional codes. While the global turbo decoder is not ML,
it has been shown to perform within 0.7 dB of the Shannon
limit on the AWGN channel for bit-error rates (BER’s) of 10
and message lengths of 65 536 [1].
In this paper, we consider coherent BPSK signaling over a
nondispersive Rayleigh slow-fading channel. With appropriate
sampling, the discrete representation of this channel is
where is an integer symbol index,
symbol amplitude ( ), and
is a BPSK
is an i.i.d. AWGN com-
ponent with zero mean and power spectral density . The
fading amplitude is modeled with a Rayleigh pdf,
for . With sufficient channel interleaving
(fully interleaved), the ’s are independent. Without sufficient
channel interleaving, we adopted an exponentially correlated
channel model as in [5] and [6]. In this model, the continuous-
time, autocorrelation function is given by
where is the Doppler bandwidth and is the lag parameter.
For Rayleigh channels, the turbo decoder must be modified
to incorporate the appropriate channel statistics. In the MAP
algorithm, this corresponds to formulating the transition metric
( ’s). For a fully interleaved channel and known fading
amplitudes (side information, SI), the transition metric from
[7] is given as
(1)
The probability is conditionally Gaussian,
.
For the fully interleaved channel without side information
(NSI), the transition metric is given as
(2)
HALL AND WILSON: TURBO CODES ON RAYLEIGH FADING CHANNELS 161

To formulate , we use the law of total probability with Hamming weight produces a codeword with Hamming
and to write weight . Substituting into (6), the average upper bound for
word and bit error can be expressed as

(3)

In [8], it is noted that the evaluation of the integral in (3) has

no known closed form. To avoid this problem, it is proposed
(8)
in [8] to assume that is Gaussian in the region of
most probable . From this assumption, (3) is approximated
as and

(4) (9)
(5)
In (8) and (9), is an expectation with respect to
The term is not a function of the conditioning ( ), the distribution . This average upper bound is attractive
therefore making its computation unnecessary in the MAP because relatively simple schemes exist for computing
algorithm [9]. It should also be noted that for the Rayleigh from the state transition matrix of the RSC [10], [11]. With
channel with average energy of 1, . , the performance of turbo codes can be studied on
various statistical channels by formulating the two-codeword
III. PERFORMANCE BOUNDING probability for the channel of interest and using (8) or
(9).
The ability to evaluate turbo codes in regions of high
signal-to-noise requires lengthy simulations or an analytic
B. for Fully Interleaved Channels with SI
bounding technique. In [10] and [11], an average upper bound
is developed for turbo codes. It is shown that this bound is very For the average upper bound, exact two-codeword probabili-
useful in determining the “error floor” as well as understanding ties or tight upper bounds are required. On the fully interleaved
the impact of constituent encoder choice and block size on channel with SI, the exact probability of incorrectly decoding
performance for the AWGN channel. Here, we apply this a codeword into a codeword which differs from in
bound to the Rayleigh fading channel. bit positions indexed by is

A. Derivation of the Average Upper Bound (10)

Consider the traditional union upper bound for the ML
decoding of an block code. Without loss of generality, Here, is the tail integral of a standard Gaussian density
we assume that the all-zeros codeword was sent, and we write with zero mean and unit variance defined as
the upper bound on the probability of word error as

(6)
Here, is the number of codewords with Hamming weight
and is the probability of incorrectly decoding to
a codeword with weight . For a turbo code with a fixed
interleaver, the construction of requires an exhaustive
search. Due to complexity issues involved in this search,
[10] and [11] propose an average upper bound constructed
by averaging over all possible interleavers. The result of this
averaging can be thought of as the traditional union upper
bound, but with an average weight distribution. As in [11],
the average weight distribution can be written as
To compute the average word error probability, we must
average over the channel gains . The result
is a multidimensional integral given as
(11)
If the fading amplitudes are independent, the indexes of the
differing bit positions are of no importance—only the weight
of the incorrect codeword matters. Therefore, we can formulate
the two-codeword probability in terms of only the Hamming
distance of the codewords as

(7)

where is the number of input words with Hamming (12)

weight and is the probability that an input word
162 IEEE JOURNAL ON SELECTED AREAS IN COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 16, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 1998

and Option 3 (Bound): Another option for upper bounding

on the fully interleaved fading channel with SI is
to upper bound the function in the integrand of (12). For
this approach, we have two possibilities. First, consider the
-function bound
For the average upper bound, we need an exact representa- (19)
tion of or a tight upper bound. The exact evaluation of
(12) is very difficult. To solve this problem, we examine four With (19), we bound the function of (12) as
options. The first option is to simplify (12) to a form that can
be evaluated via numerical integration. The other three options
avoid the problem of numerical integration by seeking closed (20)
form upper bounds for .
Option 1 (Exact): In [12], it is noted that can be
expressed in the alternative form given by Substituting this bound into (12), we observe a product of
integrals, each having closed-form solutions, simplifying the
bound to
(13)

Substituting into (21)

(14) Option 4 (Bound): As an alternative to (19), consider the

-function bound
Since all the fades are independent, the -dimensional integral
(22)
for reduces to a product of integrals over each . Fur-
thermore, these integrals have closed-form solutions allowing From this bound, the function of (12) can be bounded as
us to write

(15)
(23)

While (15) has no known closed-form solution, it can be

evaluated via numerical integration over the single variable . Substituting this bound into (12) and evaluating the integrals,
For the average upper bound, we may wish to avoid numerical we upper bound as
integration for every value of and so we next
examine three bounding options.
Option 2 (Bound): To avoid numerical integration in (15), (24)
consider upper bounding the integrand as

In Fig. 1, the four options for the evaluation of the two-

(16)
This bound will be tight for large values of and will
allow us to upper bound with the closed-form expression
codeword probability are illustrated for . The slope of the
curves in this figure is determined by the diversity order which,
for independent fading, corresponds to the codeword distance
. For example, Fig. 1 shows a reduction in of
two orders of magnitude from 10–14 dB. In the
semilog plot, the slope of the curve is

slope

(17) Comparing the bound options to the exact curve, in regions

of low SNR, Option 4 is the tighter of the three bounds.
where However, in this region, note the weakness of Option 2. In
regions of high SNR, the roles are somewhat reversed, with
(18) Option 2 being almost exact, while Options 3 and 4 differ
from the exact by a scale factor.
HALL AND WILSON: TURBO CODES ON RAYLEIGH FADING CHANNELS 163

Fig. 1. Comparison of P2 (d) expressions for the fully interleaved Rayleigh channel with SI and d = 5.

C. for Fully Interleaved Channels with NSI assumption, the two-codeword probability can be bounded by
For the fully interleaved channel with NSI, we use the bound an expression which is a function of and given as
developed by Hagenauer in [8]. This bound is based on the
simplified decoding metric (5), and is given by

(27)

(25) IV. RESULTS

A. Simulation Results
For the low signal-to-noise region, analytic evaluation of
where and . turbo codes has proven very difficult. Therefore, we examine
performance based on simulations. Simulations will consider
D. for Correlated Channels with SI rate-1/3 turbo schemes using the 16-state RSC with generator
(21/37) . This scheme is often denoted (1, 21/37, 21/37) due to
For the exponentially correlated fading channel with SI, we
its construction via parallel concatenation. The 16-state RSC
will appeal to bounds developed in [5] and [6] for . In
has 6, one less than the optimum free distance code
[6], it is noted that tight bounds on require knowl-
which has 7. However, this is the encoder used in
edge of the positions of differing symbols in the codewords
original paper of turbo codes [1].
and . This bound is given as
For the fully interleaved channel, we have plotted simulation
data for rate-1/3 turbo schemes with different block sizes in
Figs. 2 and 3. Here, we are considering input frames of length
420, 5000, and 50 000 bits. In each plot, a capacity limit
is shown for reference (see the Appendix for a derivation of
(26) these limits). In all simulations, the turbo decoder uses the
BJCR algorithm with modifications found in [7]. The results
In this expression, is the Hamming distance between the for 420 are shown after eight iterations, while both
two codewords, and indicates the time spacing between 5000 and 50 000 are shown after 15 iterations.
differing code symbols with duration . For example, It should be noted the simulations without side information
(100101) compared to the all-zeros codeword has and were done using the optimum metric rather than the simplified
and . Note that there will be ’s. metric shown previously [13]. In all cases, a single turbo
For the union bound, we can loosen the bound in (26) as interleaver is used with the interleaver fixed for all simulated
in [6] and [5] by making the pessimistic assumption that all frames. For 420, a helical interleaver is used which
differing symbols are adjacent ( , ). With this has been shown to be effective on the AWGN channel [14].
164 IEEE JOURNAL ON SELECTED AREAS IN COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 16, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 1998

Fig. 2. Simulations on the fully interleaved Rayleigh channel with side information (SI).

Fig. 3. Simulations on the fully interleaved Rayleigh channel without side information (NSI).

For block sizes greater that 1000, it has been observed that
randomly generated interleavers generally perform better than
deterministic interleaver designs [15]. Therefore, for
5000 and 50 000, the fixed interleaver is generated
randomly and used without optimization.
With SI, it can be observed that for 50 000, the perfor-
mance of is within 0.7 dB of the capacity limit on the Rayleigh
channel. However, even for 420, the performance is
much better than uncoded BPSK which achieves BER
at 44 dB. Therefore, these rate-1/3 turbo codes are
capable of coding gains exceeding 40 dB. Without channel
side information, the performance degrades approximately 0.8
dB, consistent with the corresponding capacity limits (see the
Appendix). Furthermore, the performance for 50 000
remains within 0.7 dB of the capacity limit for BER .
In Figs. 4 and 5, the performance of the same turbo schemes
with 420 and 5000 is shown for various fading
bandwidths. It can be observed that performance deteriorates
rapidly as decreases (fading process slows). It should also
be noted that for large blocks, the penalty for decreased fading
HALL AND WILSON: TURBO CODES ON RAYLEIGH FADING CHANNELS 165

Fig. 4. Simulations on the exponentially correlated Rayleigh channel with k = 420 and SI.

Fig. 5. Simulations on the exponentially correlated Rayleigh channel with k = 5000 and SI.

bandwidth is less severe. For a BER and (Figs. 6–12). It should be noted that the tightness of these
0.01, the 420 scheme suffers roughly a 4-dB penalty bounds to actual simulation data from a specific interleaving
versus fully interleaved performance, while 5000 is only scheme is questionable for several reasons. These include
penalized 2 dB. Similar results can be observed for the union bound, the averaging over all interleavers, and the
0.001, implying that large blocks contribute greater diversity bounding of . This fact is illustrated in Fig. 6. It should
to the system. also be noted that the true performance of turbo codes does
not “diverge” at low SNR, as indicated by the bounds. In fact,
B. Bound Results the change in slope of the BER bound curves around 10 is
We now evaluate the average upper bounding technique not an effect of the channel, but rather an artifact of the union
for various channel models and various turbo schemes bound attributable to overcounting [11].
166 IEEE JOURNAL ON SELECTED AREAS IN COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 16, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 1998

Fig. 6. Simulation and average bound for (1, 21/37, 21/37), K = 420 (SI and NSI).

Fig. 7. Average upper bound results on the fully interleaved Rayleigh channel with SI using different two-codeword probabilities and the (1, 5/7, 5/7)
turbo scheme with K = 10.

In Fig. 7, a plot for small block length illustrates the effects
of the different bounds outlined previously. Motivated
by this figure, the bound results in the remainder of this
work will use the bound given in (24). This bound offers the
best compromise between performance in regions of low SNR
while not requiring numerical integration.
In Figs. 8 and 10, the effects of increased block length can
be observed. In [10], it is noted that the interleaver gain for
increased block length is proportional to for all RSC’s.
Therefore, for an increase in block length from 100 to 1000,
the performance increase is 1/10, which can be observed in the
figures. The slopes of BER bounds will eventually converge
to the minimum distance of the ensemble of codes. Therefore,
the effects of using encoders with better free distance can be
seen in Figs. 9–11. This effect is most evident is regions of
high SNR. In regions of low SNR where our bounds are less
useful, the actual weight spectrum becomes more important in
influencing performance.
HALL AND WILSON: TURBO CODES ON RAYLEIGH FADING CHANNELS 167

Fig. 8. Average bounds for the fully interleaved Rayleigh channel with K = 100 and SI.

Fig. 9. Average bounds for the fully interleaved Rayleigh channel with 16-state RSC’s and SI.

TABLE I fact, this degradation can be predicted if we return to the two-

ENERGY DEGRADATION DUE TO CORRELATED
FADING AT HIGH SNR FOR K=100
codeword probability. Approximating (27) by dropping the last
two terms, the term can be viewed as an
energy degradation factor multiplying . Therefore, if
we assume that the minimum distance dominates, as is the
case at high SNR, we can approximate the difference relative
to the fully interleaved channel. These differences are shown
For the exponentially correlated channel, Fig. 12 shows the in Table I as well as Fig. 12.
average bound results for 100 and the (1, 21/37, 21/37) While these bounds give insights into achievable perfor-
turbo code. As in the simulations, performance degrades as mance and how to choose constituent encoders, they tell little
the correlation of the channel increases ( decreases). In regarding the performance of the best interleaving scheme for
168 IEEE JOURNAL ON SELECTED AREAS IN COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 16, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 1998

Fig. 10. Average bounds for the fully interleaved Rayleigh channel with K = 100 and NSI.

Fig. 11. Average bounds for the fully interleaved Rayleigh channel with 16-state RSC’s and NSI.

a given block size and constituent encoder. In can be said
that the best scheme performs better than the ensemble bound
but performance could be much better. This is due to the
variation in the achievable minimum distances within the class
of interleaving schemes for a given block size and constituent
encoder. For example, over the class of all interleavers, the (1,
21/37, 21/37) turbo scheme with 420 has a worst case
interleaver which yields a minimum distance of ten. However,
it is known that this scheme using a helical interleaver can
achieve a minimum Hamming distance of 22 [16]. Therefore,
in regions of high SNR, actual performance will be much
better than the average bound due to the dramatic differences
in the diversity orders. Again, at low SNR, the multipliers on
low-weight events contribute to make the situation less clear.
V. DESIGN FOR CORRELATED FADING
To examine the design of turbo codes on correlated chan-
nels, we will consider the union upper bound on block-error
probabilities for a specific turbo code rather than the ensemble
average considered above. The union bound for the probability
HALL AND WILSON: TURBO CODES ON RAYLEIGH FADING CHANNELS 169

Fig. 12. Average bounds for the exponentially correlated Rayleigh channel with (1, 21/37, 21/37), K = 100 and SI.

of bit error of an turbo code is given as The term is referred to as the phrase length
product and can be used as a design parameter [6].
(28)
A. Interleaver Design Issues
where is the information weight of and Using (30) and (31), we can make some statements regard-
is the two-codeword probability. A bound for this probability ing the design of turbo codes in areas of high signal-to-noise.
is given in (26). As in [6], we can loosen and simplify this In this region, error events will be dominated by codewords
bound to having minimum Hamming distance . Therefore, we can
rewrite (30) as

(29) (32)

If we substitute (29) into (28), we have

From this approximation and the definition of from
above, we develop the following design objectives for the
turbo interleaving scheme:
1) maximize , referred to as maximizing the diversity
order
2) among the class of interleaving schemes achieving the
maximum , minimize .
The first criterion is identical for turbo code design on
AWGN channels, and involves creating interleavers that pre-
(30) vent short merges in both constituent trellises. However, the
traditional turbo scheme using only one interleaver might
have more than one interleaver that achieves the maximum
where the approximation arises from for small . Therefore, our second criterion states that, within the
and represents an effective information weight multiplier class of interleavers achieving maximum , choose the one
for the class of error events of distance defined as which minimizes . From (31), we observe that this
statement reduces to maximizing the phrase length product
(31)
for sequences achieving . In fact, this product is maxi-
mized when the weight is evenly spread throughout the entire
codeword.
170 IEEE JOURNAL ON SELECTED AREAS IN COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 16, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 1998
Fig. 13. Turbo code fragments.
Fig. 14. Turbo codeword after traditional serialization.
B. Turbo Modifications
In its classical representation, a PCCC turbo scheme having
two constituent encoders is generally drawn with only one
interleaver preceding the second constituent encoder. In this
scheme, codewords are formed by the serialization of the
systematic and parity streams. In this scheme, transmitter
latency is reduced since there is no additional buffering stage
following encoding. Receiver latency is also reduced since
the first constituent decoding can be done as the codeword
is received. Despite these benefits in terms of latency, the
traditional serialization procedure will suffer problems on
correlated fading channels due to clustering of weight within
codewords. This clustering occurs since the event in-
volves short merges in both constituent trellises. Figs. 13 and
14 illustrate this clustering effect.
With a single turbo interleaver, this clustering of weight is
always going to be present for sequences that produce low
Hamming weight. However, the clustering can be reduced
by adding an additional interleaver either before the first
encoder or before the serialization of the systematic sequence
(Fig. 15). The extra interleaver should improve performance
by increasing the phrase length product for low output weight
sequences, as well as reducing the correlation between adjacent
systematic symbols for the constituent decoders. The system-
atic interleaver should operate over the entire input frame,
with the design being arbitrary provided that it is sufficiently
different from the turbo interleaver. A possible candidate is
the row/column interleaver which reads data into a matrix by
rows while reading the data out by columns.
For situations with relaxed constraints on system latency,
another possible interleaving scheme is to append a block
interleaver following the serialization procedure as in Fig. 16.
Block interleavers have been shown to perform well in mit-
igating fading effects by reducing the effective correlation
time of the channel. The ability of this scheme to reduce
channel correlation is directly related to the size of the
block interleaver or the interleaver depth. Unfortunately, the
additional latency for the scheme is proportional to the size
of the interleaver. If received codewords are buffered at the
receiver before decoding, the addition of a block interleaver
designed to scramble over codewords only increases latency
at the transmitter. For the design of these interleavers, the
row/column interleaver again is a strong candidate due to
the fact that it provides uniform spacing between formerly
adjacent symbols.
Figs. 17 and 18 show simulation results illustrating the ben-
efits of the alternative interleaving schemes for exponentially
correlated channels with SI. In Fig. 17, a (1, 21/37, 21/37)
turbo code is used where Here, a 21 20 helical
interleaver is used and For the block interleaving
scheme, a row/column interleaver with dimensions 35 36
is used. For the systematic interleaving scheme, a 20 21
row/column interleaver is used. The size of the systematic
interleaver is matched to the input block length ( 420)
while the block interleaver is matched to the codeword length
( ).
In the simulation, for a BER of 10 , the block and
systematic interleaving schemes offer coding gains of 2 and
3 dB, respectively. While these gains do not match the coded
performance on the fully interleaved channel, they have been
obtained with relatively little effort (i.e., latency and extra
hardware). If the goal was the performance of the fully
interleaved channel, the size of the block interleaver could
be increased.
In Fig. 18, a turbo design with large block
and stronger degree of channel correlation ( 0.001) is
considered. Here, the turbo interleaver uses the same random
design used in the simulations. The block interleaver is a 125
120 row/column design while the systematic interleaver is
a 100 50 row/column design. Despite the strong channel
correlation, the additional interleaving yields coding gains of
5 and 7 dB, respectively. The increase in the coding gains
over the previous example is largely related to the size of the
systematic and block interleavers. Again, by increasing the
size of the block interleaver, the fully interleaved performance
can be approached. In both previous examples, it can be noted
that interleaver design is more critical as decreases.
VI. CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, we have shown via simulations that turbo
codes are capable of performance very near the capacity limit
on fully interleaved fading channels. Furthermore, we have
shown simulation results and bounds to indicate the perfor-
mance of turbo systems under conditions of both independent
and correlated fading. The bound results give indications of
achievable performance as well as the effects of block length
and constituent encoder choice. We concluded by proposing
interleaving options as well as structural modifications to im-
prove turbo code performance on correlated fading channels.
APPENDIX
With coherent BPSK signaling, the discrete fading channel
model is given as , where is the channel output
and is an input BPSK signal with energy constraint .
HALL AND WILSON: TURBO CODES ON RAYLEIGH FADING CHANNELS 171

Fig. 15. Systematic interleaving for fading channels.

Fig. 16. Block interleaving for fading channels.

Fig. 17. Simulation results for turbo modifications on the exponentially correlated Rayleigh channel with K = 420, BTs = 0.01, and SI.

The variable is an AWGN component, and is the channel conditioned on this knowledge. For this case, we write the
gain with Rayleigh distribution and is independent of . capacity expression as
Channel capacity is defined as the maximum over the input (33)
distribution of the mutual information between the
channel output and input . For the fading channel, (34)
if the fading amplitude is known, the mutual information is
172 IEEE JOURNAL ON SELECTED AREAS IN COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 16, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 1998

Fig. 18. Simulation results for turbo modifications on the exponentially correlated Rayleigh channel with K = 5000, BTs = 0.001, and SI.
and simplifies to

(35) (38)

The steps above are based on the independence of and , In this expression, is the Rayleigh pdf with average
conditional probability rules, and the law of total probability. power of 1 and is the Gaussian pdf with a mean
is the mutual information between and of and variance . The term is defined as
conditioned on knowledge of the channel gain .
is the expectation over the distribution . Based on the (39)
independence of and , this distribution can be written as
(40)
If channel side information is not available, the channel
For symmetric channels with a finite input alphabet (i.e., capacity is written
BPSK), the maximization in the capacity definition is achieved
(41)
by an equiprobable input distribution
. From the determination of
and , the capacity expression is (42)

(43)

The channel gain emerges in this expression as we examine

, which can be written as
(36)

By symmetry, is

Substituting back into and using the simplifications

for

(37)
(44)
HALL AND WILSON: TURBO CODES ON RAYLEIGH FADING CHANNELS
Fig. 19. Channel capacity on the fully interleaved Rayleigh channel with coherent BPSK signaling.
TABLE II
CAPACITY LIMITS FOR COHERENT BPSK ON
THE INDEPENDENT RAYLEIGH FADING CHANNEL
where
(45)
Equations (38) and (44) can be computed using numerical
integration and the results are plotted in Fig. 19. Notice that
the lack of SI costs about 1 dB in for codes of rate
1/4 to 1/2.
From the noisy channel coding theorem, a code exists that
will give arbitrarily small error performance provided the
rate of the code is less than the capacity of the channel
. By equating the code rate and channel capacity, we can
determine the smallest such that arbitrarily small error
performance is achievable. Through appropriate puncturing of
the parity sequences, turbo codes of any rate are attainable.
However, turbo code rates of 1/2 and 1/3 are most commonly
found in the literature. Using (38) and (44), the smallest
are shown in Table II for these code rates based on
the following relation:
From the converse to the channel coding theorem, the
probability of error can be lower bounded in regions where
the code rate is greater than the channel capacity from the
173
solution to the following equation [17]:
For BPSK signaling with the assumption of equiprobable
inputs, and , the true boundary is found
from the solution to
(46)
Unfortunately, for fading channels with BPSK signaling,
(46) has no closed-form solution due to the complexity of
the capacity expressions and . Therefore, we
simply show a vertical line to indicate the minimum
required for zero error performance in Figs. 2 and 3.
REFERENCES
[1] C. Berrou, A. Glavieux, and P. Thitimajshima, “Near Shannon limit
error-correcting coding and decoding: Turbo codes,” in Proc. IEEE Int.
Conf. Commun., 1993, pp. 1064–1070.
[2] S. L. Goff, A. Glavieux, and C. Berrou, “Turbo-codes and high spectral
efficiency modulation,” in Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. Commun., 1994, pp.
645–649.
[3] P. Jung, “Novel low complexity decoder for turbo codes,” Electron.
Lett., pp. 86–87, Jan. 1995.
[4] L. R. Bahl, J. Cocke, F. Jelinek, and J. Raviv, “Optimal decoding of
linear codes for minimizing symbol error rate,” IEEE Trans. Inform.
Theory, pp. 284–287, Mar. 1974.
[5] F. Gagnon and D. Haccoun, “Bounds of the error performance of coding
for nonindependent Rician-fading channels,” IEEE Trans. Commun., vol.
40, pp. 351–360, Feb. 1992.
[6] S. Shamai and G. Kaplan, “Achievable performance over the correlated
Rician channel,” IEEE Trans. Commun., vol. 42, pp. 2967–2978, Nov.
1994.
[7] P. Robertson, “Illuminating the structure of code and decoder of
parallel concatenated recursive systematic (turbo) codes,” in Proc. IEEE
GLOBECOM Conf., 1994, pp. 1298–1303.
[8] J. Hagenauer, “Viterbi decoding of convolutional codes for fading- and
burst-channels,” in Proc. Int. Zurich Seminar, 1980.
[9] A. S. Barbulescu and S. S. Pietrobon, “A simplification of the modified
Bahl decoding algorithm for systematic convolutional codes,” in Proc.
174 IEEE JOURNAL ON SELECTED AREAS IN COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 16, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 1998

Int. Symp. Inform. Theory Appl., Sydney, NSW, Australia, Nov. 1994,
pp. 1073–1077.
[10] S. Benedetto and G. Montorsi, “Unveiling turbo codes: Some results
on parallel concatenated coding schemes,” IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory,
vol. 42, pp. 409–429, Mar. 1996.
[11] D. Divsalar, S. Dolinar, R. J. McEliece, and F. Pollara, “Transfer
function bounds on the performance of turbo codes,” TDA Progr. Rep.
42-121, JPL, Cal Tech, Aug. 1995.
[12] J. Craig, “A new, simple and exact result for calculating probability for
two-dimensional signal constellations,” in Proc. IEEE MILCOM, 1991,
p. 25.5.1.
[13] E. K. Hall, “Performance and design of turbo codes on Rayleigh fading
channels,” Master’s thesis, Univ. Virginia, Charlottsville, 1996.
[14] A. S. Barbulescu and S. S. Pietrobon, “Terminating the trellis of turbo-
codes in the same state,” Electron. Lett., vol. 31, pp. 22–23, Jan.
1995.
[15] S. Dolinar and D. Divsalar, “Weight distributions for turbo codes using
random and nonrandom permutations,” TDA Progr. Rep. 42-121, JPL,
Cal Tech, Aug. 1995.
[16] W. J. Blackert, E. K. Hall, and S. G. Wilson, “An upper bound on
turbo code free distance,” in Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. Commun., Dallas,
TX, June 1996, pp. 957–961.
[17] S. G. Wilson, Digital Modulation and Coding. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice-Hall, 1996.
Stephen G. Wilson (S’65–M’68) received the
B.S.E.E. degree from Iowa State University,
Ames, the M.S.E.E. degree from the University
of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and the Ph.D. degree
in electrical engineering from the University of
Washington, Seattle.
He is currently Professor of Electrical Engineer-
ing at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. His
research interests are in applications of information
theory and coding to modern communication
systems, specifically data compression of still
and moving imagery for digital transmission, and digital modulation
and coding techniques for satellite channels, wireless networks, spread
spectrum technology, and transmission on time-dispersive channels. Prior
to joining the University of Virginia faculty, he was a Staff Engineer for
the Boeing Company, Seattle, WA, engaged in system studies for deep-space
communication, satellite air-traffic-control systems, and military spread-
spectrum modem development. He also acts as consultant to industrial
organizations in the area of communication system design and analysis and
digital signal processing, and is the author of the graduate-level text Digital
Modulation and Coding.
Dr. Wilson is presently Area Editor for Coding Theory and Applications
of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMMUNICATIONS.

Eric K. Hall received the B.S.E.E. degree from

Duke University, Durham, NC, in 1994 and the
M.S.E.E. degree from the University of Virginia,
Charlottesville, in 1996.
He spent the summer of 1996 working for Lock-
heed Martin Tactical Communications Systems, Salt
Lake City, UT. Currently, he is working toward the
Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering at the Uni-
versity of Virginia. His research deals with practical
and theoretical aspects of error-control coding.
Mr. Hall is a member of Eta Kappa Nu and the
IEEE Communications and Information Theory Societies.