Approaches to adaptive Reed-Solomon coding for OFDM systems

In this paper, we present new adaptive coding and modulation approaches through erasure allocation at the transmitter for Reed-Solomon (RS) codes using both equalbit and variable-bit OFDM sub-carrier allocation. Using a constrained data rate, we introduce a mechanism for code rate adaptation using code symbol puncturing in conjunction with erasure decoding based upon a Codeword Error Rate (CER) approximation. Consequently, these new approaches result in performances that improve upon existing bit-loading and powerloading algorithms (up to 3dB) that do not take into account the channel coding.