Irregular Puncturing for Convolutional Codes and the Application to Unequal Error Protection

In this paper, convolutional codes are studied for puncturing with irregular puncturing periods. Irregular puncturing can generate punctured codes with more available rates and better bit-error-rate performance compared with the conventional scheme with a single puncturing period. For the application to unequal error protection, a new multiplexing scheme is also proposed for rate-compatible punctured convolutional (RCPC) codes which can guarantee smooth transition between rates without extra overheads. Finally, families of good RCPC codes with irregular puncturing tables are given by a computer search