Block coding trade-offs for mobile radio channels

Considers the burst-error characterisation of a mobile radio digital communication channel, and with suggestions for error-control coding techniques that can be employed on a channel where errors occur in bursts. Two measures which help characterize a bursty channel are introduced: burst correlation which provides a means of ascertaining the lengths of bursts occurring; and burst concentration, which quantifies the number of bursts occurring in a given size of coding block. These two measures help a code designer to select an appropriate coding technique for the bursty channel, and to determine a suitable degree of bit or burst (symbol or character) interleaving. The paper concentrates on the relative performance of various coding-interleaving schemes and on the effect of varying the parameters of each scheme