Burst error statistics of simulated Viterbi decoded BFSK and high-rate punctured codes on fading and scintillating channels

The burst error statistics of a soft-decision Viterbi decoder were simulated and obtained for the case when the transmitted signal is: (1) encoded with constraint length=3, rate 1/2 convolutional codes and rate 2/3, 3/4, 4/5, and 7/8 punctured convolutional codes; (2) modulated via noncoherent BFSK for the AWGN channel; and (3) subjected to slow and non-selective scintillation/fading modeled by the Nakagami-m and Rician pdfs. These statistics are evaluated to determine how Viterbi decoder burst error statistics vary with the channel and code parameters, and to compare the statistics of the Nakagami-m and Rician fading models (Morris and Chang 1990). The results have important implications for the design of interleaved or noninterleaved concatenated coding schemes, and to the development of burst error models and simulators for scintillating and fading channel environments. This extends the earlier burst-error-statistics results of Deutsch and Miller (1981), and Miller, Deutsch, and Butman who looked at the nonfading case for BPSK modulation and coherent demodulation.>