Performance of differential pulse-position modulation (DPPM) with concatenated coding over optical wireless communications

The concatenation of marker and Reed-Solomon codes in order to correct insertion/deletion errors in differential pulse-position modulation (DPPM) over optical wireless communications is presented. The concatenated code decoding algorithms with hard-decision and soft-decision detection are presented. The performance of the hard-decision coded DPPM system is evaluated over both nondispersive and dispersive channels via analysis and simulation. It is shown that the coding gain provided by the concatenated code is approximately 4 dB when the code rate is about 0.7 and the channel is nondispersive. Over a dispersive channel, the coded system performs better than the uncoded system when the ratio of delay spread to bit duration is not high. A soft-decision detector is employed to combat intersymbol interference. The soft-decision decoding algorithm, which has low complexity and can be practically implemented, is described. The performance over nondispersive and dispersive channels is evaluated by analysis and simulation. It is shown that the soft-decision system requires approximately 2 dB less transmit power than the hard-decision system for additive white Gaussian noise and low-dispersive channels. Soft decoding also provides a performance improvement in high-dispersive channels.