Block coded modulation of combined Huffman and run length limited/error control codes

Abstract

A technique to combine the three processes of a digital communication system, namely source coding, channel coding and modulation, is presented. The proposed system employs Huffman code for source coding, run length limited/error control codes (RLL/ECC) for channel coding and binary frequency shift keying/multi-phase shift keying (BFSK/MPSK) for modulation. It is shown that a reduction of the overall complexity in the combined demodulator/decoder is obtained as compared to its separate counterparts. The error performances are also shown to yield similar results for both the combined and separate block coded modulation (BCM) schemes. The algorithms for the proposed BCM schemes are designed and implemented and their error performances are compared with those employing coded, as well as uncoded, MPSK modulation.