Design of parallel concatenated convolutional codes

A parallel concatenated convolutional coding scheme consists of two constituent systematic convolutional encoders linked by an interleaver. The information bits at the input of the rst encoder are scrambled by the interleaver before entering the second encoder. The codewords of the parallel concatenated code consist of the information bits followed by the parity check bits of both encoders. Parallel concatenated codes ("turbo codes"), decoded through an iterative decoding algorithm of relatively low complexity, have been recently shown to yield remarkable coding gains close to theoretical limits. In this paper, we characterize the separate contributions that the interleaver length and constituent codes give to the overall performance of the parallel concatenated code, and present some guidelines for the "optimal" design of the constituent convolutional codes. This work has been supported by Agenzia Spaziale Italiana