Progressive layering for MLCM: high performance at minimal complexity

Abstract

A progressive Multi-Level Coded Modulation (MLCM) scheme is proposed, using Bit-Interleaved Coded Modulation (BICM) as a baseline. By maintaining the same modulation order and incrementally increasing system complexity through additional bits in the Bose-Chaudhuri-Hocquenghem (BCH) and/or Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) layers, MLCM achieves performance comparable to or surpassing BICM. In the MLCM system, data is mapped to bit streams with varying channel capacities, reducing the reliance on high-complexity channel codes and thereby lowering the overall complexity and power consumption of Forward Error Correction (FEC). Starting from the lowest-complexity layer and progressively increasing complexity, this scheme yields an optimized MLCM with significantly reduced FEC power consumption. Experimental results confirm that the proposed scheme achieves optimal performance at the lowest complexity with a fixed modulation order.