Turbo coding scheme for GPRS system

In wireless communication systems, error control coding (ECC) is a necessity to provide reliable communications over unreliable channels. The ever evolving applications of 3G mobile systems are so demanding that the most efficient techniques for channel coding should be employed. Turbo codes have been shown to yield an outstanding coding gain close to theoretical limits in the additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel. They have been studied over a Rayleigh fading channel as well and showed a remarkable performance. We propose a turbo coding scheme to replace the convolutional coding already in use in the General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) system (known as 2.5G). Evaluation of the proposed encoder by means of computer simulation has shown performance improvements over the two channel models considered.