Channel capacity of bit-interleaved coded modulation schemes using 8-ary signal constellations

The object of the work described was to determine the 8-ary signal sets that maximise the coding gains achieved by power-efficient bit-interleaved coded modulation (BICM) schemes over an additive white Gaussian noise channel. To this end, the channel capacity limit of BICM for several 8-ary constellations has been evaluated. It is shown that the most suitable constellation for designing a BICM scheme depends on the desired spectral efficiency of the system.