The capacity of orthogonal and bi-orthogonal codes on the Gaussian channel

This correspondence analyzes the performance of concatenated coding systems and modulation schemes operating over the additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel by examining the loss of capacity resulting from each of the processing steps. The techniques described in this correspondence allow the separate evaluation of codes and decoders and thus the identification of where loss of capacity occurs. Knowledge of this capacity loss is very useful for the overall design of a communications system, e.g., for evaluating the benefits of inner decoders that produce information beyond the maximum-likelihood (ML) estimate. The first two sections of this correspondence provide a general technique for calculating the composite capacity of an orthogonal or a bi-orthogonal code and the AWGN channel in isolation. The later sections examine the composite capacities of an orthogonal or a bi-orthogonal code, the AWGN channel, and various inner decoders including the decoder estimating the bit-by-bit probability of a one, as is used in turbo codes. The calculations in these examples show that the ML decoder introduces a large loss in capacity. Much of this capacity loss can be regained by using only slightly more complex inner decoders, e.g., a detector for M-ary frequency-shift keying (MFSK) that puts out the two most likely frequencies and the probability the ML estimate is correct produces significantly less degradation than one that puts out only the most likely frequency.