Analysis and design of rate compatible serial concatenated convolutional codes

We provide a performance analysis of a new class of serial concatenated convolutional codes (SCCC) where the inner encoder can be punctured beyond the unitary rate. The puncturing of the inner encoder is not limited to inner coded bits, but extended to systematic bits. We derive analytical upper bounds to the error probability of this particular code structure and address suitable design guidelines for the inner code puncturing patterns. We show that the proportion of systematic and parity bits to be deleted strongly depends on the SNR region of interest. Furthermore, we show that puncturing of the inner code systematic bits should be interleaver dependent. Based on these considerations, we derive design guidelines to obtain well-performing rate-compatible SCCCs families. Throughout the paper, the performance of the proposed codes are compared with analytical bounds, and with the performance of PCCC and SCCC proposed in literature