Coded modulation for satellite broadcasting

In this paper, three-level block coded 8-PSK modulations, suitable for satellite broadcasting of digital TV signals, are presented. A design principle to achieve unequal error protection is introduced. The coding scheme is designed in such a way that the information bits carrying the basic definition TV signal have a lower error rate than the high definition information bits. The large error coefficients, formally associated with standard mapping by set partitioning, are reduced by considering a nonstandard partition of an 8-PSK signal set. The bits-to-signal mapping induced by this partition allows the use of suboptimal low-complexity soft-decision decoding of binary block codes. Parallel operation of the first and second stage decoders is possible, for high data rate transmission. Furthermore, there is no error propagation from the first-stage decoder to the second-stage decoder.