ADVANCES IN CODING FOR

THE FADING CHANNEL

EZIO BIGLIERI
Politecnico di Torino (Italy)

1
CODING FOR THE FADING CHANNEL

• Is Euclidean distance
the best criterion?

2
MOST OF THE COMMON WISDOM
ON CODE DESIGN
IS BASED ON HIGH-SNR GAUSSIAN CHANNEL:

MAXIMIZE THE MINIMUM EUCLIDEAN DISTANCE

3
FOR DIFFERENT CHANNEL MODELS,
DIFFERENT DESIGN CRITERIA MUST BE USED

4
FOR EXAMPLE, EVEN ON LOW-SNR
GAUSSIAN CHANNELS
MINIMUM-EUCLIDEAN DISTANCE IS NOT
THE OPTIMUM CRITERION

EXAMPLE: Minimum P(e) for

4-point, one-dimensional constellation:

low SNR

high SNR
5
WIRELESS CHANNELS DIFFER
CONSIDERABLY FROM HIGH-SNR
GAUSSIAN CHANNELS:

☞ SNR IS A RANDOM VARIABLE

☞ AVERAGE SNR IS LOW
☞ CHANNEL STATISTICS ARE NOT GAUSSIAN
☞ MODEL MAY NOT BE STABLE

6
CODING FOR THE FADING CHANNEL

• Modeling the wireless channel

7
 COHERENCE BANDWIDTH

DEFINITION:

1
----------------------
DELAY SPREAD

☞ OPERATIONAL MEANING:
Frequency separation at which two frequency
components of TX signal undergo
independent attenuations 8
 COHERENCE TIME

DEFINITION:

1
---------------------------
DOPPLER SPREAD

☞ OPERATIONAL MEANING:
Time separation at which two time
components of TX signal undergo
9
independent attenuations
FADING-CHANNEL CLASSIFICATION

Bx
flat selective
in in time
time and frequency
Bc
flat
flat in
in time and
frequency
frequency

Tc Tx
10
MOST COMMON MODEL FOR FADING

• channel is frequency-flat
• channel is time-flat (fading is “slow”)

11
MOST COMMON MODEL FOR FADING

• FREQUENCY-FLAT CHANNEL:

Fading affects the received signal as a

multiplicative process
noise
Received signal:
r(t ) = R(t )exp jΘ(t ) x(t ) + n(t )
Gaussian process:
R Rayleigh or Rice transmitted
signal

12
MOST COMMON MODEL FOR FADING

• SLOW FADING :

Fading is approximately constant

during a symbol duration

Received signal:
r(t ) = R exp jΘ x(t ) + n(t ), 0<t <T
This is constant over
a symbol interval

13
COHERENT DEMODULATION

Received signal:

r t =R  xt nt  , 0tT

Phase term is estimated
and compensated for

14
 CHANNEL-STATE INFORMATION

The value of the fading attenuation is the

“channel-state information”

This may be:

• Unknown to transmitter and receiver

• Known to receiver only
(through pilot tones, pilot symbols, …)
• Known to transmitter and receiver
15
EFFECT OF FADING ON ERROR PROBABILITIES

1
bit error probability, binary antipodal signals

0.1

RAYLEIGH
0.01 FADING

0.001
GAUSSIAN
CHANNEL
0.0001

0.00001
0 10 20 30

signal-to-noise ratio (dB)

performance of uncoded modulation over the fading channel

with coherent demodulation 16
CODING FOR THE FADING CHANNEL

• Optimum codes for the

frequency-flat,
slow fading channel
• Euclid vs. Hamming
• How useful is an
“optimum code”?

17
 MOST COMMON MODEL FOR CODING

Our analysis here is concerned with the

frequency-flat, slow,

FULLY-INTERLEAVED CHANNEL

as the de-interleaving mechanism creates a

fading channel in which the random variable
R in adjacent intervals are independent

18
 DESIGNING OPTIMUM CODES

Chernoff bound on the pairwise error probability

over the Rayleigh fading channel with high SNR:
Hamming distance
Signal-to-noise ratio
−dH ( x ,x )
1 Γ 2
P(x → x ) ≤ ∏ ≤ δ 
Γ 4 
k
1+ | xk − x k |2
4
Product distance

Most relevant parameter: Hamming distance

19
 DESIGNING OPTIMUM CODES

Design criterion:

Maximize Hamming distance among sign

A consequence:

In trellis-coded modulation, avoid “parallel transitio

as they have Hamming distance = 1.
20
 DESIGNING OPTIMUM CODES

If we maximize Hamming distance among

signals strange effects occur. For
example:
if fading acts
independently
on I and Q parts:

4PSK Effect of a deep fade

on Q part (one bit is
lost)
if fading acts
independently
on I and Q parts:

Rotated 4PSK Effect of a deep fade 21

(same Euclidean distance) on Q part
(no bit is lost)
DESIGNING OPTIMUM CODES

Problems with optimum fading codes:

• The channel model may be unknown,

or incompletely known
• The channel model may be unstable

22
 ROBUST CODES

In these conditions, one should look for

robust, rather than optimum,
coding schemes

23
CODING FOR THE FADING CHANNEL

• BICM as a robust coding

scheme

24
 A ROBUST SCHEME: BICM

encoder bit channel demo

modulato bit decoder
interleaver r d. deinterlea
ver
☞ interleaving is done at bit level
☞ demodulation and decoding are separated

25
 A ROBUST SCHEME: BICM

Separating demodulation and decoding is a considerable

departure from the “Ungerboeck’s paradigm” , which states
that demodulation and decoding should be integrated
in a single entity for optimality

But this may not be true if the channel is not Gaussian!

Bit interleaving may increase Hamming distance am

code words at the price of a slight decrease of Euclid
distance (robust solution if channel model is not sta
26
 A ROBUST SCHEME: BICM

BICM idea is that Hamming distance

(and hence performance over the fading channel)
can be increased by making it
equal to the smallest number of bits
(rather than channel symbols)
along any error event:
00 00 00
    correct path

11 10 11 concurrent path
 

TCM: Hamming distance is 3

27
BICM: Hamming distance is 5
 A ROBUST SCHEME: BICM

BICM DECODER USES MODIFIED “BIT METRICS”

With TCM, the metric associated with symbol s is
p(r | s)
With BICM, the metric associated with bit b is

∑ p( r | s )
s∈Si ( b )
i
whereS (b)set of symbols whose label is b in position i
is the
01
● ●
EXAMPLE:
11 ● ● 00 S1 (0) ●
● 28
10
 A ROBUST SCHEME: BICM

he performance of BICM with ideal interleaving

depends on the following parameters:

• Minimum binary Hamming distance of the code sele

• Minimum Euclidean distance of the constellation se

so we can combine:
• A powerful modulation scheme
• A powerful code (turbo codes, …)
29
EXAMPLE
: 16QAM, 3bits/2 dimensions

ENCODER BICM TCM

MEMORY dE 2
dH dE 2
dH

2 1.2 3 2 1
3 1.6 4 2.4 2
4 1.6 4 2.8 2
5 2.4 6 3.2 2
6 2.4 6 3.6 3
7 3.2 8 3.6 3
8 3.2 8 4 3
30
 ANTENNA DIVERSITY & CHANNEL INVERSION

Possible solution to the”robustness problem”:

Turn the fading channel into

a Gaussian channel, and use standard co

• Antenna diversity
• Channel inversion as a power-allocation
technique

31
CODING FOR THE FADING CHANNEL

• Antenna diversity

32
ANTENNA DIVERSITY (order M)

• The fading channel becomes Gaussian

as M → ∞
• Codes optimized for the Gaussian
channel perform well on the Rayleigh
channel if M is large enough
• Branch correlation coefficients up to 0.5
achieve uncorrelated performance
within 1 dB
• The error floor with CCI decreases
exponentially with the product of M
times the Hamming distance of the code
used 33
 EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

Performance was evaluated for

the following coding schemes:

 J4: 4-state, rate-2/3 coded 8-PSK optimized

for Rayleigh-fading channels
 U4 & U8: Ungerboeck’s rate-2/3 coded 8-PSK
with 4 and 8 states optimized for the Gaussian cha
 Q64: “Pragmatic” concatenation of the “best” bina
rate-1/2 64-state convolutional code (171, 133)
mapped onto Gray-encoded 4-PSK
34
 EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
0
10

-2
10
BER

-4 U4, M=1
10

J4, M=1

-6
10
U4, M=16
J4, M=16

J4, M=4 U4, M=4

-8
10
5 10 15 20 25 30 35
35
Eb/N0 (dB)
CODING FOR THE FADING CHANNEL

• The block-fading channel

36
Most of the analyses are concerned with the

FULLY-INTERLEAVED CHANNEL

as the de-interleaving mechanism creates a

virtually memoryless coding channel.

HOWEVER,

in practical applications such as digital cellular

speech communication, the delay introduced by
long interleaving is intolerable
37
FACTS

In many wireless systems:

☞ Typical Doppler spreads range from 1 Hz to 100 Hz

(hence coherence time ranges from 0.01 to 1 s)

☞ Data rates range from 20 to 200 kbaud

☞ Consequently, at least
L=20,000 x 0.01 = 200 symbols
are affected approximately by the same fading gain

38
FACTS

Consider transmission of a code word of length n.

For each symbol to be affected by an independent

fading gain, interleaving should be used

The actual time spanned by the interleaved code

word becomes at least nL

☞ The delay becomes very large

39
FACTS

In some applications, large delays are unacceptable

(real time speech: 100 ms at most)

Thus, an n-symbol code word

is affected by less than n independent fading gains

40
BLOCK-FADING CHANNEL MODEL

This model assume that the fading-gain process

is piecewise constant on blocks of N symbols.

It is modeled as a sequence of independent

random variables, each of which is the fading gain
in a block.

A code word of length n is spread over M blocks

of N symbols each, so that n=NM

41
 BLOCK-FADING CHANNEL MODEL
1 M
N
2
N
3
N .. N

n=NM ..
• Each block of length N is affected by the same fadin

• The blocks are sent through M independent channels

• Interleaver spreads the code symbols over the M blo

(McEliece and Stark, 1984 -- Knopp, 1997) 42

BLOCK-FADING CHANNEL MODEL

Special cases:

M=1 (or N=n) the entire code word

is affected by the
same fading gain
(no interleaving)

M=n (or N=1) each symbol is affected

by an independent
fading gain
(ideal interleaving) 43
BLOCK-FADING CHANNEL MODEL

The delay constraints determines

the maximum M

The choice M → ∞ makes the channel

ergodic, and allows Shannon’s channel
capacity to be defined (more on this later)

44
System where this model is appropriate:

GSM with frequency hopping

4 4
3 3
2 2 2
1 1 1
t
M=4 (half-rate GSM) 45
System where this model is appropriate:

IS-54 with time-hopping

1 2 1

M=2

46
COMPUTING ERROR PROBABILITIES
“Channel use” is now the transmission
of a block of N coded symbols

From Chernoff bound we have, over

Rayleigh block-fading channels:
1
ˆ)≤
P( X → X ∏ 1 + d 2
m∈M m / 4N0

Set of indices in which Squared Euclidean distance

coded symbols differ between coded blocks
47
COMPUTING ERROR PROBABILITIES

For high SNR:

Signal-to-noise ratio Hamming block-distance

ˆ)
−d H ( X , X
1 Γ 2 
ˆ)≤
P( X → X ∏ m∈M 1 +
Γ 2
≤ δ 
4 
dm
4
Product distance

48
Relevant parameter for
design
Minimum Hamming block-distance
D between
code words on block basis:

Error probability decreases with

exponent Dmin
(also called: code diversity)

49
EXAMPLE (N=4)
Block #1 Block #2
00 00 00 00

11 11

11 Dmin =2
00
10
10
01

01
11
4 binary symbols 4 binary symbols 50
Bound on Dmin

With S-ary modulation, Singleton bound

holds for a rate-R code:

  R 
Dmin ≤ 1 +  M 1 −  
  log2 S  

51
Example: Coding in GSM

Rate-1/2 convolutional code (0.5 bits/dimension)

used in GSM with M=8. It has dfree =7
52
Example: Coding in GSM
dfree path is: {0...011010011110...0}

Symbols in each one of the 8 blocks:

1: 0...0110...0
2: 0...0110...0
Dmin =5
3: 0...0000...0
4: 0...0100...0
5: 0...0000...0
6: 0...0000...0
7: 0...0100...0
8: 0...0100...0 53
This code is optimum!

With full-rate GSM, R=0.5 bits/dim, M=8, S=2. Hence:

Dmin ≤ 5
achieved by the code. (With S=4 the upper bound
would increase to 7).

54
CODING FOR THE FADING CHANNEL

• Power control

55
PROBLEM:
How to encode if CSI is known at
the transmitter (and at the receiver)

56
 We have:r (t ) = R x(t ) + n(t )
Assume R is known to transmitter
and receiver
γ
If: xt =   st 
R
(channel inversion) then the fading channel
is turned into a Gaussian channel

57
annel inversion is common
spread-spectrum systems
th near-far imbalance

ROBLEM: For Rayleigh fading channels the aver

transmitted power would be infinite

OLUTION: Use average-power constraint.

58
CODING FOR THE FADING CHANNEL

• Using multiple antennas

59
MULTIPLE-ANTENNA MODEL

(Single-user) channel with

t transmit and r receive antennas:

t r

60
 CHANNEL CAPACITY

RATIONALE: Use space to increase diversity

(Frequency and time cost too much)

Each receiver sees the signals radiated from

the t transmit antennas

Parameter used to assess system quality:

CHANNEL CAPACITY

(This is a limit to error-free bit rate, provided

by information theory) 61
 CHANNEL CAPACITY
Assume that transmission occurs in frames:
these are short enough that the channel is
essentially unchanged during a frame,
although it might change considerably from one
frame to the next (“quasi-stationary” viewpoint)

We assume the channel to be

✔ unknown to the transmitter, but
✔ known to the receiver

However, the transmitter has a partial knowledge

of the channel quality, so that it can choose
the transmission rate 62
 CHANNEL CAPACITY
Now, the channel varies with time from frame
to frame, so for some (small) percentage of
frames delivering the desired bit rate at the
desired BER may be impossible.

When this happens, we say that a channel outage

has occurred. In practice capacity is a random
variable.

We are interested in the capacity that can be

achieved in nearly all transmissions (e.g., 99%).
63
 CHANNEL CAPACITY

1%-outage capacity
(upper curves)
for Rayleigh channel
vs. SNR and
number of
antennas
Note: at 0-dB SNR,
25 b/s/Hz are
available with t=r=32!

t=r
(SNR is P/N at each receive antenna) 64
CHANNEL CAPACITY
1%-outage capacity
per dimension
(upper curves)
for Rayleigh
channel
vs. SNR and
number of
antennas

t=r 65
ACHIEVABLE RATES

66
SPACE-TIME CODING
(Alamouti, 1998)

Consider t =2 and r =1.

Denote s0 the signal from antenna 0

and s1 the signal from antenna 1
During the next symbol period
-s1* is transmitted by antenna 0
s0* is transmitted by antenna 1

67
SPACE-TIME CODING
The signals received in two adjacent time slots are
r0 = r (t ) = h0 s0 + h1s1 + n0
∗ ∗
r1 = r (t + T ) = − h s + h1s0 + n1
0 1

The combiner yields

~ ∗
s0 = h0 r0 + h1r1∗

~ ∗
s = h r −h r ∗
1 1 0 0 1
68
SPACE-TIME CODING

So that:
~ 2 2
s0 = h0 + h1 s0 + noise
~ 2 2
s1 = h0 + h1 s1 + noise

A maximum-likelihood detector makes a

decision on s0 and s1. This scheme has the same
performance as a scheme with t =1, r =2 and
maximal-ratio combining. 69
SPACE-TIME CODING
t =2
r =1

70
SPACE-TIME CODING

MRRC=
maximum-
ratio
receive
combining SNR (dB) 71
SPACE-TIME CODING

The performance of this system with t =2

and r =1 is 3-dB worse than with t =1 and r =2
plus MRRC.

This penalty is incurred because the curves are

derived under the assumption that each TX
antenna radiates half the energy as the single
transmit antenna with MRRC.

72
 SPACE-TIME CODING
(Tarokh, Seshadri, Calderbank, et al.)

Consider two transmit antennas

Example:
Space-time code achieving diversity 2 with
one receive antenna (“2-space-time code”),
and diversity 4 with two receive antennas

73
SPACE-TIME CODING

Label xy means that

signal x is transmitted on antenna 1, while
signal y is (simultaneously) transmitted on
antenna 2
00 01 02 03
2-space-time code
10 11 12 13 4PSK
4 states
20 21 22 23 2 bit/s/Hz

30 31 32 33 74
SPACE-TIME CODING
• If yjn denotes the signal received at antenna j
at time n, the branch metric for a transition labeled
q1 q2 … qt is

r t 2

∑
j =1
y nj − ∑ hi , j qi
i =1

(note that channel-state information is needed

to generate this metric)

75
SPACE-TIME CODING

For wireless systems with a small number

of antennas, the space-time codes of
Tarokh, Seshadri, and Calderbank provide
both coding gain and diversity

Using a 64-state decoder these come

within 2—3 dB of outage capacity

76
TURBO-CODED MODULATION
(Stefanov and Duman, 1999)

77
TURBO-CODED MODULATION

BER for several

turbo codes
and a 16-state
space-time code

78