Error Correction in Impulsive Noise Environments by Applying Turbo Codes

In the recent years, iterative ("turbo") processing techniques with soft-in/soft-out components have received considerable attention. Examples are turbo decoding, turbo equalization, and turbo multi-user detection. The authors shall consider the application of turbo-codes to environments with impulsive white noise. Impulsive noise has a nonGaussian nature and is e.g. found in many wireless channels due to impulsive phenomena of radio-frequency interference and also in power line and in digital subscriber line communication systems. A detector/turbo decoder concept, derived from turbo equalization, shall be presented. The illustrated concept avoids numerical instabilities. It shall be shown that turbo-codes facilitate considerable performance improvements over noncoded systems. Furthermore, for benchmarking reasons, the deployment of a conventional rate 1/2 convolutional code with constraint length 5 and octal generators 23₈,35₈ will be taken into account