Iterative estimation and decoding for FH-SS with slow Rayleigh fading

The performance of turbo codes is investigated in a frequency-hopped spread-spectrum (FH-SS) system with full-band thermal noise and Rayleigh fading. For cases where the data rate exceeds the hopping rate (i.e., there exists multiple bits per hop) and fading side information (SI) does not exist, our approach is to iteratively estimate the fading levels. Simulation is performed for coherent and noncoherent reception, variable number of bits per hop, and cases where fading SI is available or unavailable to the decoder. It is shown that iterative channel estimation performed in conjunction with iterative decoding can improve the overall decoding performance. Finally, the performance of an FH-SS system using standard fading assumptions is compared to the performance of a measured fading channel. Due to flaws in the assumptions, the measured fading channel yields several decibels of performance loss relative to the ideal fading channel.