A comparison of block code performance for mobile radio channels: trade-offs between block length interleaving depth and type

The results reported in this contribution form part of a study of burst-error channels. The study was based on error records derived from a hardware Rayleigh fading simulator designed to model the 900 MHz mobile radio channel (S.H. Razavi (1988)). Digital transmission over fading communication media like the mobile radio channel is particularly prone to disruption by bursty (nonrandom or clustered) error patterns. The study was concerned with the characterisation of burst-error channels and an assessment of the performance of various block error-control coding techniques designed to combat error bursts. Since the study covered a wide range of concepts and techniques, and produced a large number of results, the author concentrates on the concept of burst interleaving and its performance compared to that of bit interleaving