On the performance of bandwidth efficient RS coded MPSK signaling over a Rayleigh fading channel

The idea of combining RS (Reed-Solomon) codes with multiphase signaling schemes on fading channels is introduced. The performance of these schemes over a Rayleigh fading channel is evaluated. The lower bound of the post decoding bit error probability for three RS-coded 8-PSK (phase-shift keying) schemes for both errors-only decoding and erasures-and-errors decoding techniques are obtained through the analysis and computer simulation. These results show that substantial coding gains can be obtained relative to uncoded QPSK. The coding gain for a very simple RS (7,5)-coded 8-PSK scheme, using hard decision decoding, at a bit-error rate of 10^-5, is about 16 dB, which can be increased by 10 dB using longer codes. An additional improvement of 2 dB is obtained by using erasures-and-errors decoding