A Comparison of Rate Compatible PCCC and SCCC for Next Generation Wireless Communication Systems

In this paper, we conduct performance comparison of rate compatible parallel concatenated convolutional code (PCCC) and serially concatenated convolutional code (SCCC) in additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and frequency selective fading channels. Series of computer simulation results show that the packet error rate (PER) performance of memory 2 SCCC is worse than that of memory 3 PCCC by 0.4-0.8 dB at 10^-2 PER after the sufficient number of decoding iterations, whereas the complexity of SCCC is lower than that of PCCC by about 39%. Increasing the memory length in SCCC does not lead to performance gain. On the other hand, reducing memory length in PCCC leads to significant performance degradation. However, reducing the number of iterations to half in PCCC leads to lower complexity than SCCC and still offers better PER performance than SCCC in terms of the required E_b/N₀ for 10^-2 PER. Therefore, PCCC can achieve better trade-off between complexity and performance than SCCC.