Performance analysis of the hybrid ARQ/FEC scheme with RCPC codes on fading mobile satellite channel

The concept of rate-compatible punctured convolutional (RCPC) codes allows transmission of incremental redundancy and continuous rate variation to change from low to high error protection within a data packet. The same soft decision Viterbi decoder can be used for a family of RCPC codes of the same memory length by an adequate puncturing rule according to the channel state information. This paper contains a description of RCPC codes, presents some of the thinking that contributes to the analysis of their performance on fading channels and gives some performance curves based on computer simulation.