International Journal of Recent Technology and Engineering (IJRTE)

ISSN: 2277-3878, Volume-8 Issue-2, July 2019

Distributed Coding for OFDM based

Cooperative HF Radio Communication System
D. Praveen Kumar, M. Sushanth Babu, P. Pardha Saradhi, M. Gopi Krishna

 introduced to continuously monitor the available channels

Abstract: High frequency (HF) radio system now-a-days used and grade them accordingly to its quality and make sure the
to establish the communication in an area which is isolated from high quality of the transmission form source to destination.
the outside world due to natural calamities. Conventional HF ALE system typically emits energy on each band of
systems are associated with analog voice communication systems;
frequencies and other node appraises and records the arriving
is now shifted to digital voice communication to meet the demands
as expected for high data rates for transmission. Cooperative signal quality from each station on each frequency band that
communication is different from conventional relay-assisted HF is assigned. The HF standard MIL-STD 188-141A was
systems and aims to support the challenging expectation of future introduced based on asynchronous ALE which examine the
generation HF communication systems. Recent days distributed spectrum at a rate of 2 to 5 channels/sec and provide the data
coding is a variety of channel coding developed in a distributed rate up to 75 - 2400bits/sec in different configurations. Data
manner for cooperative wireless networks. In this paper we
rates in the range 75bps – 120Kbps can be obtained by using
present an overview of various distributed coding design in
OFDM based cooperative HF radio communication system. physical layer standard MIL-STD 188-110C (released in
2011). It includes different protocols i.e., low and high rate
Index: cooperative Communication, Distributed Coding, High data link protocols for short and large messages respectively.
Frequency, OFDM. The PHY layer various burst waveforms (BW) at 2400 bauds
use the basic 8-PSK modulation [2].
I. INTRODUCTION In HF system, both the communications i.e., direct link
Basically High Frequency (HF) band (2 – 30MHz) has (LOS) and non line of sight communications typically in the
been considered as principal way for long-range range 100 – 150km can be established via direct wave and
communication (wireless), using a simple inexpensive surface wave respectively [2]. In HF transmission a signal is
equipment, for both internationally and with in a country projected vertical toward the ionosphere which upon
which are isolated areas now due to disaster. Radio refraction a coverage of 300 km at most. HF communication
communication using this HF band is referred to as HF is used beyond mountain and forests. In sky wave
communication. In past few years HF technology was propagation the slanted transmission toward the ionosphere
considered out dated when the satellite communication (SC) lets HF radio achieves over-the-horizon (OTH)
has emerged. But, because of vulnerability of base stations in communications with nearly worldwide coverage. Because
natural calamity situations, high investment and maintenance ionosphere consists of three layers E, F1 and F2 which
cost for satellites were not the universal solution. With its varying in its altitude from 100 km to 400 km. depending on
stable behavior, HF communication has survived and placed whether the operating frequency is above or below the
itself as a powerful complementary and/or alternative maximum usable frequency (MUF) of the layer, each layer
technology to SC. Now a day there is a need for long range reflects the various amount of signals. However fading, time
communication without relying on existing infrastructure in variation and dispersion effects the OTH-HF
military applications. In favor of such long range communications.
communications; radio communications using HF band is the Diversity has been an effective technique to mitigate the
only alternative. effect of fading, which can be achieved by MIMO technique
First HF modem typically uses single sideband (SSB), by providing more radio terminals at the transmitter and at
frequency shift keying (FSK) and continuous wave (CW) receiver. System with Multiple-antennas have been studied
modulation to convey voice signals, teletype and morse especially message transmission in both SHF (3–30 GHz)
respectively based on OFDM [1] which requires manual and UHF (300 MHz–3 GHz) bands which are allocated for
operation for the identification of suitable transmission mobile phones, cordless phones, WiMAX and Wi-Fi systems
frequencies and maintain transmission in the presence of etc. [13,14]. Multiple antennas cannot be deployed at each
ionospheric layers. Automatic link establishment (ALE) was node in HF communication because the separation between
antennas is nearly with an order of several hundred meters
(λ=10 to 150m).
Revised Manuscript Received on July 06, 2019.
D. Praveen Kumar, Department of ECE, Vardhaman College of
Engineering, Hyderabad, Telangana, India.
M. Sushanth Babu, Department of ECE, Matrusri Engineering College,
Hyderabad, Telangana, India.
P. Pardha Saradhi, Dept. of ECE, KLEF, AP, India.
M. Gopi Krishna, Department of ECE, Vardhaman College of
Engineering, Hyderabad, Telangana, India.

Retrieval Number: B2849078219/19©BEIESP Published By:

Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering
DOI: 10.35940/ijrte.B2849.078219 3138 & Sciences Publication
 Distributed Coding for OFDM based Cooperative HF Radio Communication System

In [3,4] authors given the importance of this emerging condition vary with time of the day, month of the year, solar
concept by demonstrating the performance analysis of position and geomagnetic situation.
cooperative HF system. The broadly adopted HF channel model for ionospheric
Rest of the paper organizes as: link establishment between transmission is Watterson model [6-8] which is based on a
cooperative communication and High Frequency bands is tapped delay-line with L taps. In Watterson's model the
presented in section II, Section III describes various transmitted signal is delivered at several taps with adjustable
distributed coding schemes available and section IV delays, the received signal is given by the discrete
concludes with comparing various cooperative modes vs. non approximation detailed in [9] as
cooperative mode and different distributed coding schemes L
along with the advantages brought to us by using mixed yt    g t , Ti st  Ti    t  (1)
version of both cooperative communication and HF i 1

Where  t  is additive white Gaussian noise and s t  is

communication.

II. COOPERATIVE HF COMMUNICATION the modulation signal and i is number of taps,  i is the time
th
Figure.1 represents a cooperative HF communication delay of the i tap where each tap gain (fading coefficient) is
model in which source and destination terminals are given by
separated apart communicating via sky wave propagation and g (t )Gia (t ) exp( j 2fiat )Gib (t ) exp( j 2fibt ) (2)
used to establish communication with outside world. We
assumed that there are neighboring nodes equipped with Where Gia (t ) and Gib (t ) are sample functions of two
single radio terminal to the destination which act as relaying independent complex Gaussian random processes, each with
nodes. Because of the single radio terminal, all the nodes can
transmit or receive the information at a time. Within zero mean values. f ia and f ib represent the corresponding
orthogonal (i.e., TDMA based cooperation) cooperative frequency (Doppler) shifts.
phenomenon source broadcast the information to
destination and relay nodes in first phase and during second
phase relays processes the information based on relaying
protocols (i.e., Amplify and Forward or Decode and forward
relaying protocols) and re-transmit to the destination.
The information received by the destination and relay
node in the first phase is given by [9]

Where is the transmitted power, is the channel

co-efficient between the link source and relay node,
is the zero mean AWGN for the link source and relay Figure 2. Ionospheric Layers
node.
Addition of two Gaussian components results in
bi-Gaussian Doppler power spectral density of each tap is as
follows:

P ( w) 
 ww 2 

1
exp  ia 
 
  2

Gi  2 2 
ia ia  ia 
 
(3)
 ww 2 
1  ib 
 exp  
  2  2 2 
ib ib  ib 
Where  ia and  ib represent each components Doppler
Figure 1. Cooperative HF Radio communication system spread.
The HF band path losses models are considerably different
A. Propagation from higher frequency band (i.e., SHF and UHF) models.
Propagation in the HF mainly depends on the reflection of Every sky-wave in return path is affected by different amount
the radio waves that are transmitted from source towards of loss factors like: spherical spreading loss Ls , absorption
ionosphere layers. The ionosphere is divided into three layers
known as D, E and F as shown in the Figure 2. There are
sub-layers F1 and F2 in the F layer during day-light hours.
The F and E layers act primarily as radio reflectors, but D
layer acts mainly as an absorber [5]. The ionosphere layers

Published By:
Retrieval Number: B2849078219/19©BEIESP Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering
DOI: 10.35940/ijrte.B2849.078219 3139 & Sciences Publication
 International Journal of Recent Technology and Engineering (IJRTE)
ISSN: 2277-3878, Volume-8 Issue-2, July 2019

loss L A , ground reflection loss LG and the polarization relays transmit Cs2 and Cri to the destination in the 2nd time
mismatch loss LP . The path loss model for skywave return is slot (T2). The received signal at the destination in these two
time slots forms a codeword C, given by
approximated as
Lb  32.5  20 log wc 20 log L  2( L  1)  Lz (4) 
T1 T2

Where wc is the frequency of carrier in MHz, The virtual C s1 C s 2    Source
slant range L which is a function of total path length Dk C0 C r1    Re lay 1
0 C r 2    Re lay 2
 D 
and elevation angle θ, is given by L  10 log k  , and L z
 sin   B. Distributed turbo-coding (DTC)
is the loss term which includes ionospheric absorption, The general block representation of distributed trellis
maximum usable frequency (MUF) loss. The surface wave coding strategy is presented in figure 4. In distributed turbo
path loss is proportional to where is the link coding strategy, all the relay nodes employ DF relaying
distance, and δ is the path loss exponent. At smaller protocol. In first phase source broadcast the message in coded
distances, δ takes 2 and it tends to increase to 4 as the distance form towards destination and relays. Relay nodes decode the
1/ 3 received message and detect and correct the errors. After the
increases when the distance is less than 10 else, the path
error correction, it re-encodes the message and transmits to
loss is exponential. the destination during second phase. After the second phase,
distributed trellis codeword formed at the destination based
III. DISTRIBUTED CODING on these two messages. The main issue with this strategy is
The relay transmission performance can be improved error propagation which occurs because of imperfect
further if signal design and coding are communally decoding at the delay nodes. One of the easy ways to
performed at both source node and relay nodes; such overcome the error propagation in relay protocols is to use
enciphering strategy is referred as distributed coding. In this distributed turbo-coding strategy with soft information
section we present a summary of various distributed coding (DTC-SIR) which gives better performance than distributed
strategies which are implemented successfully in wireless turbo-coding with adaptive relay protocol (DTC-ARP) [10].
cooperative relaying networks.
A. Distributed space time coding
In cooperative wireless networks, spatial diversity and
gain can be achieved by distributed space time coding
strategies. There are two strategies (i) distributed space time
block coding strategy and (ii) distributed space time trellis
coding strategy. Most of the wireless relay networks employ
DSTTC because of its higher coding gain. In DSTTC
scheme, the relay employs either AF or DF protocol.
Figure 4. DTC Encoder and Decoder

This new approach consists of applying the soft

information (SIR) protocol to DTC, when relays were unable
to decode the codeword correctly. In this strategy, relay node
has two main functionalities. First and foremost function of
the relay node is to calculate the posteriori probabilities
(APPs) of information symbols based on sequence of
message symbols from source node by using a posteriori
probability (MAP) decoding algorithm. Second function of
the relay node is to calculate the Parity Symbol Soft
Estimates for the Interleaved Source Information by using
APPs of the information. The parity symbol soft estimates of
is given by [14]

Figure 3. DST coding scheme Where is the APPs of information symbols. The block
representation of the said strategy is presented in figure 5.
Figure.3 represents the generalized structure of DSTTC, in
which the communication takes two phases or time slots. In C. Distributed Low Density Parity Check Code
the specified first phase it broadcast the encoded information Distributed Low density parity check coding strategy has
(codeword Cs1) to both the destination and relay. After been proposed to additional enhance the performance of the
receiving the codeword, each relay generates a new
codeword Cri which is the estimated version of Cs1 [12].
Simultaneously, source generates a new codeword Cs2 of
same information using another encoder. The source and

Retrieval Number: B2849078219/19©BEIESP Published By:

Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering
DOI: 10.35940/ijrte.B2849.078219 3140 & Sciences Publication
 Distributed Coding for OFDM based Cooperative HF Radio Communication System

Figure 5. Block diagram of DTC-SIR.

wireless relay network [11]. In this coding strategy source

transmit the message codeword XSR1 to the relay node in first
phase. Relay node decodes the received codeword, and
corrects the errors if any and re-encodes the message. During
the second phase, source and relay nodes pass on the message
codeword’s to the destination. The joint optimization of
codeword’s XSR and XSD forms DLDPC. Because of high
performance than the turbo coding strategy at higher
modulation, LDPC coding strategy has been widely used in Figure 6. BER Performance of Coopearaitive HF System in Two
modern wireless networks. Fundamental Cooperative Modes

IV. SIMULATION RESULTS

Performance of various distributed coding strategies is
presented in this section. The essential assumptions and
parameters used for the simulation are listed in table I.

TABLE I. SIMULATION PARAMETERS

Parameter Value
Band width 9KHz
FFT length 1024
Subcarriers 192
Frequency Spacing (Δf) 46.5Hz
Carrier Frequency ( wc ) 5MHz
Path loss 105dB
Path length 700Km
Modulation 16-QAM
Path loss Exponent (δ) 2-4

Figure 6 shows the performance comparison of OFDM Figure 7. BER Performance Comparision of Various Distributed Coding
based cooperative HF communication system in two Schems
elementary cooperative modes (AF and DF). From the
simulation result, we conclude that the performance of the
network can be improved by cooperative diversity. And also
we observed that the performance of the network is improved
by 9-11dB w.r.t direct link.
Figure.7 shows the BER performance of various
Distributed coding schemes. To make a fair comparison;
assuming that the relays decode the received signals
correctly. From the results, we observed that the performance
of DLDPC is 2-5dB higher than DTC-ARP and DTC-SIR is
2–3 dB higher than DTC-ARP strategy.
We analyse the performance of cooperative HF system by
increasing number of relaying nodes i.e., L=1,2,3 under
DLDPC strategy and figure 8 gives the simulation results.
From the results we conclude that the performance of the
system is improves with the number of relaying nodes.

Figure 8. Performance of DLDPC strategy

Published By:
Retrieval Number: B2849078219/19©BEIESP Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering
DOI: 10.35940/ijrte.B2849.078219 3141 & Sciences Publication
 International Journal of Recent Technology and Engineering (IJRTE)
ISSN: 2277-3878, Volume-8 Issue-2, July 2019

V. CONCLUSION M.SUSHANTH BABU received his B.E. in

Electronics and Communication Engineering in
Cooperative communication is a major performance 2002 from North Maharastra University and his
boosting technique for future-generation HF radio systems. M.Tech. degree from Jawaharlal Nehru
Technological University, Hyderabad in 2008. He
In this paper we implemented various distributed coding was awarded Doctorate degree in Wireless
schemes in cooperative HF communication systems. We Communications at Jawaharlal Nehru
compared different scenarios and observed significant error Technological University, Hyderabad in 2014. He
is presently working as Professor in Department
rate performance improvement. There are some practical of Electronics and Communication Engineering.
issues to be taken in to account in implementing OFDM He guided 32 Masters and 30 UG projects and
based cooperative HF radio communication systems such as, supervising 05 Ph.D students. He is a member of professional bodies like,
IEEE, ISTE and IETE. He is presently technical program committee member
relays synchronization, power optimization, estimation of of 09 IEEE International Conferences. His research interests are in the areas
channels, and timing constraints which can be future of Wireless Mobile Communication, Cellular Networking, Distributed
analyzed in near future OFDM based cooperative HF radio Cooperative Communication, MIMO and Signal Processing Applications.
communication systems. P.Pardha Saradhi was born in India, A.P, in
1978. He received UG, PG and Ph.D degrees
REFERENCES from Acharya Nagarjuna University, A.P, India
in 1998, 2000 and 2012 respectively. From
1. N. Maslin, HF Communications: A Systems Approach, Plenum Press, June2000-Jan2012 he worked as lecturer in
1987. Hindu College, Machilipatnam , from Jan2012
2. E. E. Johnson, “Third-Generation Technologies for HF Radio to Feb2014 worked as Associate Professor in
Networking,” IEEE MILCOM, pp. 386–90, 1998. Sri vasavi institute of engineering and
3. M.Sharp, A. Scaglione, and S. Galli, “Distributed Randomized Space technology, Nandamuru and 2014 to till date he
Time Coding for HF Transmission,” IEEE MILCOM, pp.1–6, Oct. 2006. is working as Professor in Electronics and
4. T. Banwell et al., “Distributed Carrier Synchronization for HF Communication Engineering, K.L.University,
Cooperative Communication Employing Randomized Space–Time Vaddeswaram. He has published more than 67
Block Coding,” IEEE MILCOM, pp. 1–7, Oct. 2009. papers in International journals and Conferences. He is reviewer for several
5. N. M. Maslin, HF Communications: A System Approach, Pitman international journals including Elsevier and Taylor and Francis and served
Publishing, London, 1987. as reviewer and co-chair for one international conference. His research
6. W. N. Furman and J. W. Nieto, “Understanding HF Channel Simulator interests include antennas, liquid crystals and its applications. He is a life
Requirements in order to Reduce HF Modem Performance Measurement member of IACSIT, IAENG, UACEE and IIRJC. He is the editorial board
Variability,” Harris Corporation, RF Communications Division. member for no of indexed journals.
7. ITU, Recommendation 520-1 “Use of High Frequency Ionospheric
Channel Simulators,” Recommendations and Reports of the CCIR, vol.
III, p. 57-58, 2000.
8. C. C. Watterson, J. R. Juroshek and W. D. Bensema, “Experimental
Confirmation of an HF Channel Model,” IEEE Trans. on Comm. Tech.,
vol. COM-18, no.6, Dec. 1970.
9. J. N. Laneman, D. N. C. Tse, and G. W. Wornell, “Cooperative Diversity
in Wireless Networks: Efficient Protocols and Outage Behavior,” IEEE
Trans. on Inf. Theory, vol.50, no.12, p. 3062-3080, Dec. 2004.
10. Y. Li, B. Vucetic, and J. Yuan, “Distributed Turbo Coding with Hybrid
Relaying Protocol,” Proc. PIMRC ‘08, Sept. 2008.
11. A. Chakrabarti et al., “Low Density Parity Check Codes for the Relay
Channel,” IEEE JSAC, vol. 25, no. 2, Feb. 2007, pp. 280–91.
12. J. Yuan et al., “Distributed Space-Time Trellis Codes for a Cooperative
System,” to appear, IEEE Trans. Wireless Commun.
13. M. Uysal (Ed.), Cooperative Communications for Improved Wireless
Network Transmission: Frameworks for Virtual Antenna Array
Applications, IGI Global, 2009.
14. Yonghui Li, Branka Vucetic, Tan F. Wong and Mischa Dohler,
“Distributed Turbo Coding With Soft Information Relaying in Multihop
Relay Networks,” IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications,
Vol. 24, No. 11, November 2006.
15. H. J. Strangeways, “Estimation of Signal Correlation at Spaced
Antennas for Multi-Moded IonosphericallyReflected Signals and its
Effect on the Capacity of SIMO and MIMO HF Links,” IET Proc. 10th
Int’l. Conf.Ionospheric Radio Systems and Techniques, July 2006, pp.
306–10.

AUTHORS PROFILE
D Praveen Kumar received his B.Tech and
M.Tech in Electronics and Communication
Engineering from Jawaharlal Nehru technological
University, Hyderabad in 2006 and 2010
respectively. He has been working towards his
Ph.D. degree in Wireless Communications at KL
University since 2015. He is presently working as
Assistant Professor in Department of Electronics
and Communication Engineering at vardhaman
college of engineering, hyderabad. He guided 8
Masters and 20 UG projects. His research interests
are in the areas of Wireless Mobile Communication, Cellular Networking,
Distributed Cooperative Communication, MIMO and Signal Processing
Applications.

Retrieval Number: B2849078219/19©BEIESP Published By:

Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering
DOI: 10.35940/ijrte.B2849.078219 3142 & Sciences Publication