Improved performance of reduced M-ary orthogonal signaling using Reed-Solomon codes

This paper presents a comparison of communication systems using different signal constellation sizes and Reed-Solomon code sizes with different rates so that the overall required bandwidth is the same for each system. In these comparisons the channel symbol size is smaller than the code symbol size, so that a code symbol contains parts of more than one channel symbol. Thus, the normal assumption of independent code symbols does not apply. Instead consideration must be taken to obtain the best arrangement of channel symbols in each code symbol. Analytical expressions are derived to compare the bit error probability performance of comparable systems based on individual codewords.