Artificial Code Puncturing for Wireless Networks

Convolutional codes provide a robust means of forward error control, especially in a harsh communication medium like a wireless channel. The use of rate compatible punctured convolutional (RCPC) codes, derived by code puncturing at the transmitter, is an established method to improve the throughput of wireless networks. In this paper, we propose to exploit the idea of code puncturing at the receiver end to improve the performance of wireless systems. It is shown that utilizing the proposed protocol yields a significant reduction in the frame error rate at the expense of a slight increase in computational complexity.