Novel FEC Schemes for UWB: Design, Modelling and Performance Analysis

In this paper, the authors present the design and modelling aspects of UWB turbo codes and UWB SCCCs, along with their performance analysis in comparison with the FEC method recommended by the UWB specifications. The authors consider both the direct spread and multi-carrier versions of UWB in the presence of additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel as well as IEEE 802.15.3 channel models. The results obtained show that UWB turbo codes yield a coding gain of 3-4 dB at an error floor of 10⁶ compared to the convolutional encoding and Viterbi decoding (CEVD) method. In addition, UWB SCCC yields a coding gain of 1-2 dB at an error floor of 10^-3 in comparison with the UWB turbo codes. However, convolutional codes perform better than turbo codes at higher signal-to-noise ratios and turbo codes seem to yield a better performance than SCCCs at lower input block sizes