Irregular Convolutional Codes in Multiantenna Bit-Interleaved Coded Modulation Under Iterative Detection and Decoding

This paper develops a family of irregular convolutional codes for bit-interleaved coded modulation (BICM) systems under iterative detection and decoding. Irregular convolutional codes are constructed through irregular puncturing over multiple mother codes of different memory. Strategies based on fixed- and variable-size trellises are proposed to connect different memory mother codes. The use of irregular puncturing and code memory yields improved coding efficiency with the aid of extrinsic information transfer charts. Under ergodic and quasi-static fading conditions, multiantenna BICM systems using the proposed codes outperform comparable turbo-coded systems and multilevel coding strategies.