Blind reconstruction of punctured convolutional codes

Blind reconstruction of punctured convolutional codes is an important problem in non-cooperative communications. In this problem, the goal is to identify the employed mother code and the puncturing pattern. The state-of-the-art method employs a two-stage algebraic-based search technique. First, all the equivalent non-punctured encoders are reconstructed. Then, the mother code and the puncturing pattern are identified by searching over all equivalent encoders. In some cases, the number of equivalent encoders is very large that makes the reconstruction process very complex, time-consuming, and impractical. In this paper, we propose an algebraic-based search method for reconstruction of the mother code and the puncturing pattern that significantly reduces the complexity of blind reconstruction. The problem is formulated and solved in the general case of mother codes with more than one input bit. The proposed algorithm also works well for non-punctured convolutional codes. [Display omitted] •An algebraic method is proposed for reconstruction of convolutional codes.•The mother code is found by searching over all possible puncturing patterns.•Compared to the state-of-the-art method, the complexity is significantly reduced.