Performance of BCH and convolutional codes in direct sequence spread spectrum packet radio networks

The authors examine the performance of BCH and convolutional codes in a direct-sequence spread-spectrum packet radio network. Packet errors are caused by a combination of noise at the receiver and interference between packet transmissions that overlap in time. The interference between packet transmissions produces dependent symbol errors at the output of the demodulator. The authors first compute an upper bound on the symbol error probability. Then they use this upper bound to calculate upper bounds on the packet error probability for both BCH and convolutional codes. The results make it possible to compare the performance of BCH and convolutional codes in the presence of multiple-access interference