Comparison of convolutional and block code performance on the Rician channel

The paper is concerned with the relative performance of short constraint length convolutional codes vis-a-vis block codes when used in conjunction with either BPSK or DPSK modulation on the classical Rician fading channel. A variety of soft-decision decoding algorithms is considered for block codes while the Viterbi algorithm is used exclusively for decoding convolutional codes. Results indicate a substantial performance/complexity advantage in favor of short constraint length convolutional codes and Viterbi decoding which increases with fading severity. The work reported here extends the well-known performance advantage of convolutional codes on the AWGN channel to representative fading channels.