Adaptive-rate coding for frequency-hop communications over Rayleigh fading channels

Because of the variability of the channels in frequency-hop wireless systems and networks, the performance of error-control coding can be improved by adapting the rate of the code to the channel conditions. In this paper, adaptive-rate error-control coding is investigated for slow frequency-hop communications with Reed-Solomon coding. Two methods are investigated that use decoder side information as a means for selecting the code rate. These methods are based on counts of errors and erasures, which are provided by the demodulator and the decoder. The performance of the adaptive-rate coding system is evaluated for channels with Rayleigh fading, partial-band interference, and thermal noise