Turbo equalization of serially concatenated systematic convolutional codes and systematic space time trellis codes

A novel turbo equalization arrangement is proposed, which is constituted by a serially concatenated systematic convolutional codec and a systematic space time trellis code (CC-SSTTC) assisted scheme. The BER performance of this scheme using various interleaving sizes was characterised over an equal-power two-path Rayleigh fading channel. After eight turbo equalization iterations, an interleaving gain of approximately 5.5 dB was recorded at BER = 10(-4) for the CC-SSTTC system using a 6400-bit Space Time Trellis (STT) interleaver, when compared to the same CC-SSTTC scheme utilising a 100-bit STT interleaver. It was also observed that the CC-SSTTC scheme employing a 6400-bit STT interleaver outperformed the STT coded system utilising the same STT interleaver but without channel coding by approximately 5.7 dB; at BER = 10(-4).