Performance evaluation of Serial Concatenated Convolutional Codes over aeronautical channels

In order to support an acceptable quality-of-service (QoS) in mobile wireless communication systems in terms of physical layer metrics, Serial Concatenated Convolutional Codes (SCCCs) are emerging as a strong candidate, promising remarkable coding gains with reasonable decoding complexities. This work addresses the performance evaluation of SCCCs over aeronautical channels, based on a ground-to-air scenario, where the fixed transmitter is on the ground operating in the 24–26 MHz band, and the mobile receiver is considered to be a commercial Boeing 747 airplane. The thorough investigation on the performance of system in a case of various channel conditions during the take-off and cruising stages of the flight are considered, and the SCCC's performance parameters are adopted to fulfill the bit-error-rate (BER) requirements. The simulations are based on the worst-case scenario for ground-to-air mobile wireless communications, where the line-of-sight (LOS) is blocked by high buildings or mountains.