Experimental evaluation of combined postdetection diversity andconcatenated channel coding

The combined effects of postdetection diversity reception and concatenated channel coding are experimentally evaluated for π/4-shift QDPSK signal transmission over a Rayleigh fading channel. Two-branch postdetection diversity reception using maximal ratio combining (MRC) and selection combining (SC) are considered. The concatenated channel coding uses the Reed-Solomon (15,k) code of GP(2 ⁴) as the outer code and the BCH (7,4) code as the inner code (k=9,11,13). Measured bit error rate (BER) performance results are presented under cochannel interference (CCI) and multipath channel delay spread, as well as additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN)