Multilevel Modulation Codes for Rayleigh Fading Channels

In this paper, new multilevel modulation codes with good error rate performance on the Rayleigh fading channel are presented. It has been demonstrated that the error performance of a multilevel block code is dominated by the minimum Hamming distance of the component codes when ideal interleaving is applied. BCH codes are often used in constructing multilevel codes due to their good Hamming distance properties. Since the error performances for various levels of the MPSK signals are different, component codes have to be chosen appropriately so that their error correcting capabilities suit the required error protection for each level.