Performance of block turbo coded 16-QAM and 64-QAM modulations

Abstract

We present the results of our investigation concerning the performance of block turbo codes associated with high spectral efficiency QAM modulations. By using a pragmatic approach, simulation results show that all the block turbo coded QAM modulations we have tested are at 2.9/spl plusmn/0.2 dB of their Shannon's limit. The block turbo coded QAM modulations also outperform TCM schemes by at least 1 dB at a BER (bit error rate) of 10/sup -5/. Concerning convolutional turbo coded QAM modulations, the block turbo coded QAM modulations exhibit slightly better performance for spectral efficiencies greater than 4 bits/s/Hz.