Optimum Linear LLR Calculation for Iterative Decoding on Fading Channels

On a fading channel with no channel state information at the receiver, calculating true log-likelihood ratios (LLR) is complicated. Existing work assume that the power of the additive noise is known and use the expected value of the fading gain in a linear function of the channel output to find approximate LLRs. In this work, we first assume that the power of the additive noise is known and we find the optimum linear approximation of LLRs in the sense of maximum achievable transmission rate on the channel. The maximum achievable rate under this linear LLR calculation is almost equal to the maximum achievable rate under true LLR calculation. We also observe that this method appears to be the optimum in the sense of bit error rate performance too. These results are then extended to the case that the noise power is unknown at the receiver and a performance almost identical to the case that the noise power is perfectly known is obtained.