Concatenated codes over fading dispersive channels

Concatenated codes using short RS (Reed-Solomon) codes with CI (channel erasure information) and different outer codes are compared. It is shown that CI improves the performance of RS codes over fading dispersive channels at small values of signal-to-noise ratios (SNR<10). The improvement obtained by concatenation is significant for underspread channels. For overspread channels, less improvement is observed. In general, concatenation is recommended if small error rates are desired. This technique is effective at lower SNR because symbols are more likely to be unreliable in that range due to higher noise levels