Inserting turbo code technology into the DVB satellite broadcasting system

This paper illustrates the potential benefits of inserting turbo code technology into emerging communication satellite systems. This paper considers the application of turbo codes to the digital video broadcasting (DVB) standard, which is based on the concatenation of a Reed-Solomon code and a convolutional code. We show that by simply replacing the convolutional code with a turbo code, a 1 dB improvement in coding gain can be achieved in an AWGN channel. This benefit is obtained with no loss in code rate and only a moderate increase in decoder complexity. Furthermore, since Reed-Solomon coding is used to correct burst errors at the output of the turbo decoder, the problematic "bit error rate floor" experienced by unprotected turbo codes is practically eliminated. We then discuss methods for extending the improvement to 2 dB by using larger frame sizes and more efficient Reed-Solomon codes. We conclude with a survey of other methods that can be used to achieve further performance improvements.