Enhancing BER performance limit of BCH and RS codes using multipath diversity

Abstract

Modern wireless communication systems suffer from phase shifting and, more importantly, from interference caused by multipath propagation. Multipath propagation results in an antenna receiving two or more copies of the signal sequence sent from the same source but that has been delivered via different paths. Multipath components are treated as redundant copies of the original data sequence and are used to improve the performance of forward error correction (FEC) codes without extra redundancy, in order to improve data transmission reliability and increase the bit rate over the wireless communication channel. For a proof of concept Bose, Ray-Chaudhuri, and Hocquenghem (BCH) and Reed-Solomon (RS) codes have been used for FEC to compare their bit error rate (BER) performances. The results showed that the wireless multipath components significantly improve the performance of FEC. Furthermore, FEC codes with low error correction capability and employing the multipath phenomenon are enhanced to perform better than FEC codes which have a bit higher error correction capability and did not utilise the multipath. Consequently, the bit rate is increased, and communication reliability is improved without extra redundancy.