A Novel Channel Coding Scheme Based on BICM for IBOC-AM

A novel channel coding scheme using bit-interleaved coded modulation (BICM) embedded LDPC (BICM-L) is proposed for Hybrid In-Band-On-Channel (IBOC) Amplitude Modulation (AM) system (IBOC-AM). IBOC-AM broadcasts digital audio signals simultaneously with analog AM programs in the AM band. Since both the power and bandwidth allocated for digital audio transmission are limited in this application, BICM-L channel coding scheme is introduced in IBOC-AM, which can achieve better coding gains without bandwidth expansion. Compared with using conventional scheme which has adopted punctured convolutional coding scheme, better coding gains can be obtained by using BICM-L coding scheme in IBOC-AM. Simulation results confirm that, the coding gains of BICM-L outperform the conventional scheme with 2-3 dB over AWGN channels. For Rayleigh fading channels, the coding gains outperform the conventional scheme with 5-6 dB.