Multilevel coded 16-QAM schemes for Rayleigh fading channels

Multilevel codes show better performance compared with trellis codes on Rayleigh fading channels at comparable decoder complexity and bandwidth. However, they suffer from performance degradation due to error propagation in the multistage decoder. The authors, with a view to minimising the error propagation, compare three multilevel coded 16-QAM schemes which are four-level codes, I/Q separated two-level codes and I/Q separated two-level codes with a new set partitioning