Error distribution in turbo-decoding with max-log-MAP algorithm

Since the apparition of turbocodes in 1993, this topic has been a great success and the subject of much research. But the performance of these coding systems are often presented only in terms of bit-error-rate (BER) or frame-error-rate (FER). These parameters are not the only ones to take into account when designing a communication system. Other properties of the error distribution are also important when analysing the performance of the system at higher levels such as the networking layer. This paper presents some properties of the errors at the output of a turbo decoding system. It also presents a model that is able to describe the error burst length when using the max-log-MAP decoding algorithm.