Turbo coding applied to pragmatic trellis-coded modulation

This letter reports the application of the powerful turbo coding technique combined with the bandwidth efficient method known as trellis-coded modulation (TCM). Implemented as a simple modification of pragmatic TCM, our turbo-coded pragmatic TCM system achieved coding gains of 1-2 dB in simulations relative to pragmatic TCM. These gains were achieved with comparable complexity but greater delay than with pragmatic TCM. A table of delay as a function of interleaver length and data rate is provided as a preliminary analysis of the trade-off between the benefits of large coding gain and the costs of increased delay.