Two Stage Bit-Interleaved Coded Modulation for Multiple-Input Multiple-Output Channels

This paper introduces a two stage bit-interleaved coded modulation for the transmission of a 16-QAM constellation over a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) non-ergodic block fading channel. The channel is assumed to be perfectly known at the receiver but not at the transmitter. Iterative multistage decoding is done. The performance of the system is derived using Monte Carlo simulation. Compared to a single stage bit-interleaved coded modulation (BICM), results show that a 1 dB gain in performance is reached. Moreover, the scheme is of great interest for the construction of unequal protection schemes (UEP) where the degree of protection depends on the code rate at each level