A comparison of two iterative equalization-and-decoding techniques in frequency-hop spread-spectrum communications using Reed-Solomon coding

Two methods of packet-level iterative equalization-and-decoding are evaluated for SFH (slow-frequency-hop) spread-spectrum communication with Reed-Solomon coding. During; each iteration of the first technique, the receiver uses MLSE equalization with priors, and code-symbol erasures for bounded-distance errors-and-erasures decoding are generated by the parity-bit method. During each iteration of the second technique, the receiver uses MAP equalization with priors, and the soft equalizer outputs are used for bounded distance successive-erasures decoding. Successful decoding of some of the packet´s code words in earlier iterations is used to update the equalizer´s priors for the next iteration. The performance and decoding complexity of the two techniques are compared for several multipath channels.