Iterative equalization and decoding for high-data-rate frequency-hop spread-spectrum communications

In this paper, a packet-level iterative equalization-and-decoding technique is evaluated for slow-frequency-hop spread-spectrum communications with Reed-Solomon coding. The receiver employs MAP equalization with priors during each iteration, and the soft equalizer outputs are used for bounded-distance successive-erasures decoding. Successful decoding of some R-S codewords of the packet in earlier iterations is used to update the priors for equalization in subsequent iterations. The performance of this iterative technique is compared with the performance of one-shot equalization and successive-erasures decoding, and both are compared with the performance of a system using MLSE equalization and the parity-bit method for erasure generation. The decoding complexity of each approach is also considered, and the effect of limits on the maximum decoding delay is examined.