Successive Decoding for Finite State Markov Modelled Flat Fading Channels

This paper proposes novel successive decoding paradigm for fading channels, K independent codewords of different rates and lengths are interleaved at the transmitter according to a pattern, and successively decoded at the receiver. This enables progressively better channel estimates for the receiver, at a minimal cost of pilot symbols. At each decoding stage, channel estimation and decoding are performed separately. or iteratively if the residual channel correlation within a codeword can be exploited. The flexible interleaver pattern, after some level of optimization, achieves near-capacity system performance with only a small number of codewords K, as demonstrated numerically by a finite state Markov modelled flat fading channel