Performance of concatenated Reed-Solomon/convolutional codes with iterative decoding

The concatenated coding scheme using convolutional coding with Viterbi decoding for inner code and Reed-Solomon (RS) code for the outer code is an attractive scheme used in a wide range of digital transmission systems. In this paper, we present some results on the iterative decoding of this concatenated coding scheme. This iterative decoding algorithm combines the iterative decoding algorithm for a block turbo code and the iterative decoding algorithm for a convolutional turbo code. The iterative decoding of the concatenated RS/convolutional coding scheme is based on the soft decoding and the soft decision of the component codes. The performance of the iterative decoding of those concatenated codes has been evaluated on the Gaussian channel using Monte Carlo simulation. Coding gains up to 7.1 dB for a BER (bit error rate) of 10^-5 have been obtained on the Gaussian channel