Performance and simulation of communications systems with applications to TCM over fading channels

Over the past decade there has been considerable interest in using Monte Carlo (MC) simulation techniques for performance analysis of communications systems. Unfortunately, this approach often becomes intractable because of the prohibitive amount of simulation time required to achieve accurate estimates. Importance sampling is a modified MC technique which can result in a significant reduction in the computational cost required to obtain accurate MC estimates. We illustrate the use of importance sampling for simulating coded communications systems by presenting an efficient importance sampling methodology for simulating trellis code modulation (TCM) over Rayleigh fading channels. In particular, it is demonstrated that the proposed method can estimate the performance of these systems with a high degree of accuracy to warrant its possible use as a powerful tool for performance analysis and design of practical TCM systems.