An application of turbo trellis-coded modulation to tactical communications

Abstract

We present a frequency-hop packet radio system that is compatible with existing SINCGARS radio equipment and provides three times the spectral efficiency of SINCGARS. The system employs parallel concatenated trellis coded modulation, or turbo trellis-coded modulation, a recently proposed modulation scheme that combines the error control capability of turbo decoding with the bandwidth efficiency of trellis-coded modulation. The encoded data symbols are transmitted using continuous-phase modulation, demodulated noncoherently, and decoded with symbol-by-symbol maximum a posteriori decoding. The receiver also obtains channel quality estimates to aid in the decoding process. The turbo decoder and channel estimates provide resistance to jamming, cosite interference, and multiple-access interference. The packet success rate of the system for a variety of channel conditions is to be studied through simulation.