Abstract
The error correcting performance of the parallel concatenation of two convolutional codes is very promising. Inspired from this construction which is near the Shannon limit error correction performance, we consider a further development of concatenated codes. In this construction systematic convolutional codes and rate 1/2 systematic block codes are linked together such that only the systematic part of the convolutional codes is encoded with the block encoders. The bits of each information vector of the convolutional codes are scrambled by a given interleaving before entering to the block encoders. Then, differently from the Turbo codes, in which information symbols and the redundancy from the constituent codes are transmitted [1], we transmit only the redundancy from the convolutional and block codes. We call this construction
convolutional coupled codes and
code coupling is the new scheme of code concatenation. The structural properties of the generator matrix of the convolutional coupled code is investigated. It's minimum distance is lower and upper bounded and we introduce the term of the effective free distance. Simulation results will show, that convolutional coupled codes have the potential of being a realistic alternative to Turbo codes.