On the cutoff rate of a discrete memoryless channel with (d, k)-constrained input sequences

The cutoff rate of a discrete memoryless channel whose output sequences are from a (d, k) encoder is investigated. A rational rate (d, k) encoder is considered as a finite state machine and maximum-likelihood decoding is used to compute the cutoff rate. Some commonly used (d, k) codes, such as the rate 1/2 (1, 3) code with a two-state encoder, the IBM rate 2/3 (1, 7) code having a five-state encoder, and the IBM rate 1/2 (2, 7) code with a seven-state encoder, are used to illustrate the cutoff rate computation. Results are presented for both the binary symmetric channel (BSC) and the Gaussian noise channel. The performance of a decoder designed for noiseless transmission of (1, 3) code is compared to that of a maximum-likelihood decoder for the (1, 3) code. It is also shown that for the case of the Gaussian noise channel, a gain of about 1.7 dB in signal-to-noise ratio is possible by using 3-bit soft decisions over hard decisions