Pilot-symbol-assisted LDPC coded BICM over correlated Rayleigh fading channels

Pilot-symbol-assisted low-density parity-check (LDPC)-coded bit-interleaved coded modulation (BICM) is analyzed using the density evolution (DE) and the extrinsic information-transfer (EXIT) chart for correlated Rayleigh fading channels. The key parameter (the power correlation coefficient) is identified, and the threshold degradation is quantified. The optimal tradeoff of energy allocation between pilots and coded symbols is found to be sensitive to the normalized Doppler spread of the channel, the interpolation filter, the modulation scheme, and the pilot selection. In addition, a simple upper bound on the performance of any receiver that performs joint iterative decoding and channel estimation is derived. Extension to irregular code design is also discussed.