Skip to main content

Lund University Publications

LUND UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

The performance of serial turbo codes does not concentrate

Garin, Federica ; Como, Giacomo LU and Fagnani, Fabio (2012) In IEEE Transactions on Information Theory 58(5). p.2570-2588
Abstract
Abstract in Undetermined
Minimum distances and maximum likelihood error probabilities of serial turbo codes with uniform interleaver are analyzed. It is shown that, for a fraction of interleavers approaching one as the block-length grows large, the minimum distance of serial turbo codes grows as a positive power of their block-length, while their error probability decreases exponentially fast in some positive power of their block-length, on sufficiently good memoryless channels. Such a typical code behavior contrasts the performance of the average serial turbo code, whose error probability is dominated by an asymptotically negligible fraction of poorly performing interleavers, and decays only as a negative power of the block-length.... (More)
Abstract in Undetermined
Minimum distances and maximum likelihood error probabilities of serial turbo codes with uniform interleaver are analyzed. It is shown that, for a fraction of interleavers approaching one as the block-length grows large, the minimum distance of serial turbo codes grows as a positive power of their block-length, while their error probability decreases exponentially fast in some positive power of their block-length, on sufficiently good memoryless channels. Such a typical code behavior contrasts the performance of the average serial turbo code, whose error probability is dominated by an asymptotically negligible fraction of poorly performing interleavers, and decays only as a negative power of the block-length. The analysis proposed in this paper relies on precise bounds of the minimum distance of the typical serial turbo code, whose scaling law is shown to depend both on the free distance of its outer constituent encoder, which determines the exponent of its sub-linear growth in the block-length, and on the effective free distance of its inner constituent encoder. The latter is defined as the smallest weight of codewords obtained when the input word of the inner encoder has weight two, and appears as a linear scaling factor for the minimum distance of the typical serial turbo code. Hence, despite the lack of concentration of the maximum likelihood error probability around its expected value, the main design parameters suggested by the average-code analysis turn out to characterize also the performance of the typical serial turbo code. By showing for the first time that the typical serial turbo code's minimum distance scales linearly in the effective free distance of the inner constituent encoder, the presented results generalize, and improve upon, the probabilistic bounds of Kahale and Urbanke, as well as the deterministic upper bound of Bazzi, Mahdian, and Spielman, where only the dependence on the outer encoder's free distance was proved. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
; and
organization
publishing date
type
Contribution to journal
publication status
published
subject
keywords
Error probability, minimum distance, serially concatenated codes, turbo codes, typical code analysis
in
IEEE Transactions on Information Theory
volume
58
issue
5
pages
2570 - 2588
publisher
IEEE - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
external identifiers
  • wos:000303204900003
  • scopus:84860245324
ISSN
0018-9448
DOI
10.1109/TIT.2012.2184673
language
English
LU publication?
yes
additional info
month=May
id
f7d96e7d-8ef2-432a-8a3d-5fd268f2d61d (old id 2294019)
date added to LUP
2016-04-01 14:06:01
date last changed
2022-01-27 22:44:46
@article{f7d96e7d-8ef2-432a-8a3d-5fd268f2d61d,
  abstract     = {{Abstract in Undetermined<br/>Minimum distances and maximum likelihood error probabilities of serial turbo codes with uniform interleaver are analyzed. It is shown that, for a fraction of interleavers approaching one as the block-length grows large, the minimum distance of serial turbo codes grows as a positive power of their block-length, while their error probability decreases exponentially fast in some positive power of their block-length, on sufficiently good memoryless channels. Such a typical code behavior contrasts the performance of the average serial turbo code, whose error probability is dominated by an asymptotically negligible fraction of poorly performing interleavers, and decays only as a negative power of the block-length. The analysis proposed in this paper relies on precise bounds of the minimum distance of the typical serial turbo code, whose scaling law is shown to depend both on the free distance of its outer constituent encoder, which determines the exponent of its sub-linear growth in the block-length, and on the effective free distance of its inner constituent encoder. The latter is defined as the smallest weight of codewords obtained when the input word of the inner encoder has weight two, and appears as a linear scaling factor for the minimum distance of the typical serial turbo code. Hence, despite the lack of concentration of the maximum likelihood error probability around its expected value, the main design parameters suggested by the average-code analysis turn out to characterize also the performance of the typical serial turbo code. By showing for the first time that the typical serial turbo code's minimum distance scales linearly in the effective free distance of the inner constituent encoder, the presented results generalize, and improve upon, the probabilistic bounds of Kahale and Urbanke, as well as the deterministic upper bound of Bazzi, Mahdian, and Spielman, where only the dependence on the outer encoder's free distance was proved.}},
  author       = {{Garin, Federica and Como, Giacomo and Fagnani, Fabio}},
  issn         = {{0018-9448}},
  keywords     = {{Error probability; minimum distance; serially concatenated codes; turbo codes; typical code analysis}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  number       = {{5}},
  pages        = {{2570--2588}},
  publisher    = {{IEEE - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.}},
  series       = {{IEEE Transactions on Information Theory}},
  title        = {{The performance of serial turbo codes does not concentrate}},
  url          = {{https://lup.lub.lu.se/search/files/3779666/2294020.pdf}},
  doi          = {{10.1109/TIT.2012.2184673}},
  volume       = {{58}},
  year         = {{2012}},
}