A Union Bound Approximation for Rapid Performance Evaluation of Punctured Turbo Codes

TL;DR

This paper introduces a quick and accurate method to approximate the performance bounds of punctured turbo codes by focusing on the most impactful transfer function terms, especially effective with large interleavers.

Contribution

It develops a rapid technique to estimate turbo code performance bounds by analyzing key transfer function components, and demonstrates advantages of pseudo-random puncturing schemes.

Findings

Approximation is highly accurate for large interleavers.

Pseudo-random puncturing outperforms other schemes.

Method reduces computational complexity of performance evaluation.

Abstract

In this paper, we present a simple technique to approximate the performance union bound of a punctured turbo code. The bound approximation exploits only those terms of the transfer function that have a major impact on the overall performance. We revisit the structure of the constituent convolutional encoder and we develop a rapid method to calculate the most significant terms of the transfer function of a turbo encoder. We demonstrate that, for a large interleaver size, this approximation is very accurate. Furthermore, we apply our proposed method to a family of punctured turbo codes, which we call pseudo-randomly punctured codes. We conclude by emphasizing the benefits of our approach compared to those employed previously. We also highlight the advantages of pseudo-random puncturing over other puncturing schemes.