Error Floors of LDPC Coded BICM

In recent years performance prediction for communication systems utilizing iteratively decodable codes has been of considerable interest. There have been significant breakthroughs as far as the analysis of LDPC code ensembles is concerned but the more practical problem of predicting the FER/BER of a particular code has proved to be much more difficult. In this work we present a technique (based on the work of Richardson ´03) for finding lower and upper bounds on the performance of LDPC coded BICM systems for a given code. The insight gained from the prediction technique is used to design interleavers that improve the error floors of these systems.