Application of Coded Modulation to 1.544-Mbit/s Data-in-Voice Modems for FDM FM and SSB Analog Radio Systems

The technical issues relevant to providing high-quality digital service over analog radio using 1.544-Mbit/s DS-1 data-invoice modems operating through analog supergroup channels with 256-QAM modulation are reviewed. By means of a typical example, the desirability of increasing the fading margin when operating over FM radio systems is demonstrated. This motivates the consideration of coded modulation as a means of extending the threshold of the modem System, so that operation of the modem can be achieved in supergroup channels located higher in the radio baseband. It is found that trellis coded modulation provides better improvement of threshold performance than lattice coded modulation when the actual coding gain realized near the R0channel bound is used rather than the high signalto-noise-ratio (SNR)asymptotic coding gains. Using Ungerboeck´s eight-state trellis code [3], a coding gain of approximately 2 dB is found for operation at 28 dB SNR (1 dB from the R0bound). Furthermore, it is found that even at this low operating SNR (where error events at the coded modulation receiver ouput can be long), high-rate, interleaved Reed-Solomon codes, used for burst noise protection at high SNR, still provide over 2 dB of additional coding gain.