Bandwidth Aware FEC Algorithms for Wireless Communication Systems

Abstract

Forward Error Correction (FEC) codes used by receivers to correct transmission errors without retransmission add a considerable amount of redundant bits to data bits. The addition of redundant bits lowers the overall network throughput, thus increasing the demand for more required bandwidth. In this paper we investigate and discuss various techniques used in FEC and show their effects to data communication in terms of bandwidth utilization. Additionally we propose improvement of (2, 1, 2) Convolutional encoder to (3, 2, 3) encoder. The proposed improvements increase the code rate from 1/2 to 2/3 hence reducing error control information and increasing bit rate. The received codeword can be decoded by Soft-Output Viterbi Algorithm.

Keywords: FEC, Bandwidth, Convolutional Codes, Code Rate, Soft Output Viterbi Algorithm