Simple Iterative Channel Coding and Modulation for Harbor Wireless Communications

Abstract

Monitoring systems at the harbor require a simple communication technique to save battery energy, strong in error correction, and suitable to the harbor channel model, of which the channel is predicted to have more number of path. This paper proposes (i) a harbor channel model and (ii) a simple iterative repetition coding for harbor wireless communication of monitoring systems. The harbor channel model is derived using a series of computer simulations based on real-field harbor environmental parameters, while the proposed iterative channel coding is based on the repetition codes assisted by a doped accumulator (ACC) with a doping technique. Channel coding and doping rates are designed using an Extrinsic Information Transfer (EXIT) chart and are evaluated using a series of computer simulations in terms of Bit Error Rate (BER) and Frame Error Rate (FER) performances with an outage performance as the theoretical baseline for comparison. Since the EXIT curve of the repetition codes has steep curve, we use a non-Gray Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (QPSK) to achieve a better matching between the decoder and the demapper of harbor channels. We found that the proposed simple repetition codes and non-Gray demapper provide excellent performances for harbor communications with a cliff of BER curve. The results of this paper are expected to contribute to the development of a reliable wireless communications for the harbor monitoring applications.