Performance of trellis termination methods for RSC component encoders of turbo codes

This paper investigates different methods of trellis termination of the recursive systematic convolutional (RSC) encoders used in turbo codes (TCs). The performance of these termination methods in terms of the bit error rate (BER) and frame error rate (FER) obtained by computer simulations are compared and shown. Therefore, the best four well-known termination methods were investigated: tail-biting (circular), single-termination, interleaved dual termination (IDT) and uninterleaved dual termination (UDT). Such an investigation for the case of TCs with one input is important for the design of RSC encoders which are used in many applications.