A bit-level-based approach to coded multicarrier transmission

In this thesis bit-interleaved coded multicarrier transmission at high spectral efficiency is studied from a bit-level perspective. The analysis is based on an equivalent representation of the cascade of bit mapping and channel by a set of parallel binary-input channels, the so-called bit levels. This alternative representation was initially introduced in the context of multilevel codes, but also allows for an intuitive and plausible approach to bit-interleaved coded multicarrier transmission. For the sake of low complexity and low latency, the system implementations considered in this thesis are restricted to non-iterative variants of BICM. Terminated convolutional codes in combination with a simple Viterbi decoder are employed for the coding scheme. Furthermore, the use of square QAM signal constellations is assumed to achieve the required high spectral efficiencies. Our considerations are mainly founded on variables initially defined for the description of the equivalent channel model. In particular, we utilize the bit-level capacity and the parallel-decoding capacity in order to evaluate the multicarrier system and its individual building blocks.