Channel Coding and Information Theory

This chapter discusses fundamentals of information theory and channel coding (error correction coding ECC, Forward error correction FEC). First, key results of Shannon, including channel capacity and the relationship between transmit power and bandwidth, are discussed. Block codes multiply a block of data with an encoding matrix. For systematic codes, the resulting codeword consists of systematic bits and parity check bits. Decoding is achieved by multiplication with a parity check matrix and determination of the syndrome vector. Correction of errors within the correction sphere can be done, e.g., through lookup tables.

Convolutional codes send the source data stream through shift registers and adders, a process described by a trellis diagram. Maximum-likelihood sequence estimation (Viterbi algorithm) determines the (transmit) bit sequence with best distance metric (Hamming or Euclidean) from the received signal. Methods for combining coding and higher-order modulation include trellis coded modulation (using set partitioning for code design) and bit-interleaved coded modulation (BICM).

Turbo codes are close to capacity-achieving. They are based on transmitting differently interleaved convolutional codes; receivers use soft decoding of the constituent codes and iterative exchange of soft information (log-likelihood ratios). Low-density parity check codes (LDPCC) are decoded by belief propagation (message passing), where variable nodes and constraint nodes exchange beliefs about the codeword.

In fading channels, (block or convolutional) interleaving is essential to provide diversity. From an information-theoretic point of view, in fading channels we can distinguish between the ergodic capacity and the outage capacity. If the channel state information is known at the transmitter, waterfilling is the optimum power allocation strategy. Automatic Repeat Request ARQ) and Hybrid ARQ (including chase combining or incremental redundancy) are described in the appendix.