Performance of trellis codes for a class of equalized ISI channels

The performance of trellis codes is examined for a class of intersymbol interference (ISI) channels that occur in high-frequency radio systems. The channels considered are characterized by in-band spectral nulls and by a rapid time variation. The baseline modulation technique is 4QAM (four-point quadrature amplitude modulation). When spectral nulls are absent, performance of fractionally spaced linear equalizers and trellis decoders is found to be near ideal and to be better than using symbol-spacing in the equalizer. However, error propagation in the feedback path, resulting from equalizer-based decisions, ruins the performance of the combination of decision-feedback equalizers and trellis decoders when spectral nulls are present. Their performance can be improved by using fractionally spaced feedforward equalizer sections and by designing the decoder to compensate for ISI. Rate 2/3 codes are found to outperform rate 1/2 codes in error performance