Soft-decision COVQ for turbo-coded AWGN and Rayleigh fading channels

A robust soft-decision channel-optimized vector quantization (COVQ) scheme for turbo coded additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and Rayleigh fading channels is proposed, The log likelihood ratio (LLR) generated by the turbo decoder is exploited via the use of a q-bit scalar soft-decision demodulator. The concatenation of the turbo encoder, modulator, AWGN channel or Rayleigh fading channel, turbo decoder, and q-bit soft-decision demodulator is modeled as an expanded discrete memoryless channel (DMC). A COVQ scheme for this expanded discrete channel is designed. Numerical results indicate substantial performance improvements over traditional tandem coding systems, COVQ schemes designed for hard-decision demodulated turbo coded channels (q=1), as well as performance gains over a recent soft decoding COVQ scheme by Ho (see IEEE Commun. Lett., vol.3, p.208-10, 1999).