On error bounds and turbo-codes

Turbo-codes have been hailed as the ultimate step toward achieving the capacity limit Shannon established some 50 years ago. We look at the performance of turbo-codes with respect to various information theoretic error bounds. This comparison suggests that, if (block, or) frame error rates are considered, careful interleaver design is necessary to ensure an error performance within a fraction of a decibel of the theoretical limit for large block sizes, while random interleavers perform well for block sizes smaller than about 2 K. If the bit error performance is considered, interleaver design seems to have only a minor effect, and the codes perform close to the limit for all block sizes considered.