Orthogonal convolutional coding for the PPM optical channel

Several coding alternatives have been analyzed to improve the performance of the ideal optical pulse position modulation (PPM) optical channel, although it has been shown that performance improvements are difficult to obtain for transmission efficiencies over 1 nat/photon. In the present work, an orthogonal convolutional coding scheme is proposed, achieving better performances than previous coding alternative, over a wide range of efficiencies. Furthermore, a concatenated coding scheme using an orthogonal convolution code as an inner code and a Reed-Solomon code as an outer code is proved to be effective, achieving operation points over 3 nat/photon, with performances that cannot be obtained with other coding schemes.<>