Digital Communication Systems by Simon Haykin-113
Digital Communication Systems by Simon Haykin-113
Digital Communication Systems by Simon Haykin-113
The decoding process is stopped when it reaches a point at which no further improvement
in performance is attainable. At this point, an estimate of the message vector m is
computed by hard-limiting the a priori L-value at the output of decoder 2, yielding
m̂ = sgn L 2 m (10.127)
To conclude the discussion on turbo decoding, two other points are noteworthy:
0
1. Although the noisy vector of systematic bits r is applied only to decoder 1, its
influence on decoder 2 manifests itself indirectly through the a posteriori extrinsic
L-value, L̃ 1 m , computed by decoder 1.
2. Equations (10.122) and (10.125) assume that the a posteriori extrinsic L-values,
L̃ 1 m and L̃ 2 m , passed between decoders 1 and 2, are statistically independent
of the message vector m. In reality, however, this condition applies only to the first
iteration of the decoding process. Thereafter, the extrinsic information becomes less
helpful in realizing successively more reliable estimates of the message vector m.
c(0)
RSC encoder 1
c(1)
Input message
sequence
m
Encoded
output
t(1)
c
π
c(2)
RSC encoder 2
t(2)
(a)
Lp(r(0)) r(0)
Estimate of
message
vector Lp(z(1)) z(1)
m
La,1
Lp(z(2)) z(2)
La,2
Extrinsic
information 2
(b)
Figure 10.30 Block diagram of UMTS codec. (a) Encoder, (b) Decoder. Notes: 1. The received
vectors {r(0), z(1), r(1), z(2), r(2)} correspond to the transmitted vectors {c(0), t(0), c(1), t(2), c(2)}.
–1
2. The block labeled : interleaver. The block labeled : de-interleaver.
Haykin_ch10_pp3.fm Page 655 Friday, January 4, 2013 5:03 PM
From this description, it is apparent that the overall code-rate of the turbo code is lower
than the UMTS code-rate, namely 13, as shown by
K
r overall = ---------------------
3K + 4m
Note that if we set the memory length m = 0, the code rate roverall is increased again to 13.
On the basis of this description, each block of the multiplexed output of the turbo
encoder is composed as follows:
c(0) vector of systematic bits (i.e., message bits), followed by
c(1) and c(2) pair of vectors, representing the parity-check bits produced by the
top and bottom RSC encoders, respectively, then followed by
(1) (2)
t and t pair of vectors, representing encoder termination-tail bits for forcing
the top and bottom RSC constituent encoders back to all-zero state,
respectively.
In the UMTS standard, the block length of the turbo code lies in the range [40, 5114].
Simulation Results
In Figure 10.31, we have plotted the BER chart for the iterative decoding process, using
the turbo codec of Figure 10.30. The results were obtained for the case of 5000 systematic
bits, as follows:
• For a prescribed Eb N0 ratio, the bit errors were averaged over 50 Monte Carlo runs.
• Each point in the BER chart was the result of 100 bits per point-count in the
decoding process.
• The computations were repeated for different values of Eb N0.
The remarkable points to observe from Figure 10.31 are summarized here:
1. In the course of just four iterations, the BER of the UMTS decoder drops to 10–14 at
an SNR = 3 dB, which, for all practical purposes, is zero.
2. The steepness of the BER plot on iteration 4 is showing signs of the turbo cliff, but is
not there yet. Unfortunately, to get there would require a great deal more
computation.14 (The turbo cliff is illustrated in Figure 10.32 in the next section).
–2
10
10–4
10–6
BER
10–8
10–10 Iteration 4
Correspondingly, Figure 10.31 plots the BER chart for the turbo decoder for the sequences
of decoding iterations: 1, 2, 3, and 4. Of special interest is the BER chart for four
– 14
iterations, for which we find that the turbo decoder with BER 10 outperforms the
Viterbi decoder significantly for the same computational complexity, namely a total of 64
ACS operations.
In an idealized BER chart exemplified by that in Figure 10.32, we may identify three
distinct regions, described as follows:
a. Low BER region, for which the Eb N0 ratio is correspondingly low.
b. Waterfall region, also referred to as the turbo cliff in the turbo coding literature,
which is characterized by a persistent reduction in BER over the span of a small
fraction of dB in SNR.
c. BER floor region, where a rather small improvement in decoding performance is
achieved for medium to large values of SNRs.
As informative as the BER chart of Figure 10.32 is, from a practical perspective it has a
serious drawback. Simply put, the BER chart lacks insight into the underlying dynamics
(i.e., convergence behavior) of iterative decoding algorithms, particularly around the
turbo-cliff region. Furthermore, since the BER occurs at low BERs, excessive simulation
runs are required.
The question is: how do we overcome this serious drawback of the BER chart? The
answer lies in using the extrinsic information chart, or EXIT chart for short, which was
formally introduced by ten Brink (2001).
The EXIT chart is insightful because it provides a graphical procedure for visualizing
the underlying dynamics of the turbo decoding process for a prescribed Eb N0. Moreover,
Threshold Eb /N0
10–0
10–1
10–3
BER
10–4
10–5
10–7
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5
Eb /N0
the procedure provides a tool for the design of turbo codes characterized by good
performance in the turbo-cliff region. In any event, development of the EXIT chart
exploits the idea of mutual information in Shannon’s information theory, which was
discussed previously in Chapter 5.