Decision directed iterative channel estimation and Reed–Solomon decoding over flat fading channels

Iterative channel estimation and decoding over flat Rayleigh fading channels have been shown in literature to improve the performance of receivers in wireless communication systems. Turbo and low density parity check codes have mostly been used as the forward error correction (FEC) scheme in the iterative receiver structures. This study proposes a decision directed iterative channel estimation and decoding receiver using Reed–Solomon codes. In particular, the Koetter and Vardy, Reed–Solomon (KV–RS) soft decision decoder is adopted in the receiver structure as the FEC scheme. Two methods of deriving a priori information in joint iterative channel estimation and decoding receiver structures are also analysed in this study. The first method derives the a priori information employing the log likelihood ratio (LLR) method. A priori information derived using the LLR method is mostly used in iterative receiver structures in the literature. The second method derives the a priori information employing the distance metric (DM) method. The DM method is proposed in this study as an alternative approach to the LLR method of deriving a priori information in the iterative receivers. Hard and soft feedback information from the KV–RS decoder is considered to verify the performance of these methods. The performance of the two a priori information methods is documented through computer simulation assuming an M-ary quadrature amplitude modulation system. Simulation results verify the improvement in symbol error rate (SER) performance in the KV–RS iterative receiver structure in comparison with the KV–RS receiver without feedback. Also, the proposed DM method exhibits the same SER performance in comparison with the LLR method which is mostly used in the literature. More importantly, the proposed DM method has the advantage of less computational delay and time complexity compared with the LLR method.