EXIT Function Aided Design of Iteratively Decodable Codes for the Poisson PPM Channel

This paper presents and compares two iterative coded modulation techniques for deep-space optical communications using pulse-position modulation (PPM). The first code, denoted by SCPPM, consists of the serial concatenation of an outer convolutional code, an interleaver, a bit accumulator, and PPM. The second code, denoted by LDPC-PPM, consists of the serial concatenation of an LDPC code and PPM. We employ Extrinsic Information Transfer (EXIT) charts for their analysis and design. Under conditions typical of a communications link from Mars to Earth, SCPPM is 1 dB away from capacity, while LDPC-PPM is 1.4 dB away from capacity, at a Bit Error Rate (BER) of approximately 10^-5. However, LDPC-PPM lends itself naturally to low latency parallel processing in contrast to SCPPM.