Coding gain

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In coding theory and related engineering problems, coding gain is the measure in the difference between the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) levels between the uncoded system and coded system required to reach the same bit error rate (BER) levels when used with the error correcting code (ECC).

Example[]

If the uncoded BPSK system in AWGN environment has a bit error rate (BER) of 10−2 at the SNR level 4 dB, and the corresponding coded (e.g., BCH) system has the same BER at an SNR of 2.5 dB, then we say the coding gain = 4 dB − 2.5 dB = 1.5 dB, due to the code used (in this case BCH).

Power-limited regime[]

In the power-limited regime (where the nominal spectral efficiency [b/2D or b/s/Hz], i.e. the domain of binary signaling), the effective coding gain of a signal set at a given target error probability per bit is defined as the difference in dB between the required to achieve the target with and the required to achieve the target with 2-PAM or (2×2)-QAM (i.e. no coding). The nominal coding gain is defined as

This definition is normalized so that for 2-PAM or (2×2)-QAM. If the average number of nearest neighbors per transmitted bit is equal to one, the effective coding gain is approximately equal to the nominal coding gain . However, if , the effective coding gain is less than the nominal coding gain by an amount which depends on the steepness of the vs. curve at the target . This curve can be plotted using the union bound estimate (UBE)

where Q is the Gaussian probability-of-error function.

For the special case of a binary linear block code with parameters , the nominal spectral efficiency is and the nominal coding gain is kd/n.

Example[]

The table below lists the nominal spectral efficiency, nominal coding gain and effective coding gain at for Reed–Muller codes of length :

Code (dB) (dB)
[8,7,2] 1.75 7/4 2.43 4 2.0
[8,4,4] 1.0 2 3.01 4 2.6
[16,15,2] 1.88 15/8 2.73 8 2.1
[16,11,4] 1.38 11/4 4.39 13 3.7
[16,5,8] 0.63 5/2 3.98 6 3.5
[32,31,2] 1.94 31/16 2.87 16 2.1
[32,26,4] 1.63 13/4 5.12 48 4.0
[32,16,8] 1.00 4 6.02 39 4.9
[32,6,16] 0.37 3 4.77 10 4.2
[64,63,2] 1.97 63/32 2.94 32 1.9
[64,57,4] 1.78 57/16 5.52 183 4.0
[64,42,8] 1.31 21/4 7.20 266 5.6
[64,22,16] 0.69 11/2 7.40 118 6.0
[64,7,32] 0.22 7/2 5.44 18 4.6

Bandwidth-limited regime[]

In the bandwidth-limited regime (, i.e. the domain of non-binary signaling), the effective coding gain of a signal set at a given target error rate is defined as the difference in dB between the required to achieve the target with and the required to achieve the target with M-PAM or (M×M)-QAM (i.e. no coding). The nominal coding gain is defined as

This definition is normalized so that for M-PAM or (M×M)-QAM. The UBE becomes

where is the average number of nearest neighbors per two dimensions.

See also[]

References[]

MIT OpenCourseWare, 6.451 Principles of Digital Communication II, Lecture Notes sections 5.3, 5.5, 6.3, 6.4

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