Design of punctured serially concatenated convolutional codes

An effective algorithm for the design of punctured serially concatenated convolutional codes (SCCCs) is proposed. The algorithm is based on the density evolution technique, and its main goal is to design a code matching the outer and the inner encoder in order to reduce the bit error rate (BER) in the SNR operating region ranging from the waterfall to the error floor of the designed SCCCs. The concepts are illustrated for some specific SCCC schemes. Finally, simulation results and comparisons with other approaches proposed in the literature confirm the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.