High-rate punctured convolutional codes: structure properties and construction technique

The authors present some properties of punctured convolutional codes, providing a construction method and a list of new, good, high-rate, long-memory punctured codes. The structure of punctured codes is examined and an upper bound on the free distance of punctured codes is derived, indicating that punctured codes are good codes. A construction method that generates the low-rate original codes which duplicate given known high-rate codes through perforation is proposed. Tables of punctured codes that duplicate the best known nonsystematic codes of rates 2/3 and 3/4 with memory lengths ranging from 3 to 23 and from 3 to 9, respectively, are given, together with the best known systematic codes for rates ranging from 2/3 to 7/8 with very long memory, M=44 through 48