Coding for MPPM-like systems

Multipulse pulse position modulation (MPPM) has been widely proposed to improve data rate over the traditional pulse position modulation (PPM) in free-space optical communication systems. However, there is no known efficient method of encoding MPPM codewords. Furthermore, MPPM is not the optimal coding scheme (in terms of data rate) given the two main constraints of optical systems (duty cycle and zero runlength). In this paper, a new coding technique based on constrained coding is introduced that allows construction of codes which achieve considerable rate gain over comparable MPPM systems. In addition, our new codes allow for convenient concatenation with an outer code and are suitable for iterative decoding. Simulation results show that these codes can achieve a 6 dB coding gain over comparable MPPM systems.