Optimum detection and design of TCM signals under impulsive noise environment

The optimum detection and the design of trellis-coded modulation (TCM) signals under an impulsive noise environment are investigated. The optimum TCM receiver designed for impulsive noise is proposed, and it is shown that the TCM signals achieve better performance than the uncoded ones. Computer simulation shows that this optimum receiver, which is simple and easy to realize, gives a coding gain from several decibels up to several tens of decibels and that the performance improvement achieved by increasing the number of states of the convolutional codes is greater than that achieved under Gaussian noise. Moreover, from the capacity of the impulsive noise channel with phase modulated signals, it is shown that it is possible to achieve an improvement in performance by using the optimum TCM signal design methods, which are based on the statistical characteristics of the noise