Design and Software Validation of Coded Communication Schemes using Multidimensional Signal Sets without Constellation Expansion Penalty in Band-Limited Gaussian and Fading Channels

It has been well reported that the use of multidimensional constellation signals can help to reduce the bit error rate in Additive Gaussian channels by using the hyperspace geometry more efficiently. Similarly, in fading channels, dimensionality provides an inherent signal space diversity (distinct components between two constellations points), so the amplitude degradation of the signal are combated significantly better. Moreover, the set of Ndimensional signals also provides great compatibility with various Trellis Coded modulation schemes: N-dimensional signaling along with a convolutional encoder uses fewer redundant bits for each 2D signaling interval, and increases intra-subset minimum squared Euclidean distance (MSED) to approach the ultimate capacity limit predicted by Shannon's theory. The multidimensional signals perform better for the same complexity than two-dimensional schemes. The inherent constellation expansion penalty factor paid for using classical mapping structures can be decreased by enlarging the constellation's dimension. In this thesis, a multidimensional signal set construction paradigm that completely eliminates the constellation expansion penalty is used in standard AWGN band-limited channels and in fading channels. Theoretical work on performance analysis and computer simulations for Quadrature- Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (Q 2PSK), Constant Envelope (CE) Q2PSK, and trellis-coded 16D CEQ2PSK in ideal band-limited channels of various bandwidths is presented along with a novel discussion on visualization techniques for 4D Quadrature-Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (Q2PSK), Saha's Constant Envelope (CE) Q2PSK, and Cartwright's CEQ2 PSK in ideal band-limited channels. Furthermore, a metric designed to be used in fading channels, with Hamming Distance (HD) as a primary concern and Euclidean distance (ED) as secondary is also introduced. Simulation results show that the 16D TCM CEQ2PSK system performs well in channels with AWGN and fading, even with the simplest convolutional encoder tested; achievable coding gains using 16-D CEQ2PSK Expanded TCM schemes under various conditions are reported.