A comparison of two iterative equalization-and-decoding techniques in frequency-hop spread-spectrum communications using Reed-Solomon coding

Two methods of packet-level iterative equalization-and-decoding are evaluated for SFH (slow-frequency-hop) spread-spectrum communication with Reed-Solomon coding. During; each iteration of the first technique, the receiver uses MLSE equalization with priors, and code-symbol erasures for bounded-distance errors-and-erasures decoding are generated by the parity-bit method. During each iteration of the second technique, the receiver uses MAP equalization with priors, and the soft equalizer outputs are used for bounded distance successive-erasures decoding. Successful decoding of some of the packet's code words in earlier iterations is used to update the equalizer's priors for the next iteration. The performance and decoding complexity of the two techniques are compared for several multipath channels.