This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project from Efficient Channel Coding, Inc. will evaluate the performance and feasibility of implementing a class of combined modulation and coding techniques called Turbo Product Codes Modulation (TPCM). TPCM uses Turbo Product Codes (TPCs) and other soft-decision block codes as constituent codes applied to multiple levels in Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) formats. For example, a TPCM system applied to 16-QAM offers 3.57 bits per symbol and requires an estimated 8.9 dB Eb/No to obtain a BER of 10E-10. There are a wide variety of other TPCM formats that provide high rate and coding gain while emphasizing low complexity, enabling low-cost and high-speed implementations. Constituent TPC devices are currently under development by Efficient Channel Coding. and will greatly accelerate the implementation of TPCM systems. A flexible TPCM system is applicable to a large number of commercial and government digital communications systems that use bandwidth efficient QAM techniques. Efficient Channel Coding is targeting TPCM insertion into the next generation Direct Broadcast Satellite and other future satellite communications systems as well as emerging terrestrial systems. These terrestrial systems include Wireless Local Area Networks, Digital Radio, Digital Television, Local Multipoint Distribution Systems, cable modems, Digital Subscriber Links, and Video Blanking Interval data broadcasting.
