A Convolutionally Encoded OSTBC System with SNR-Adaptive Constellations for Low-Latency and Low-Complexity Communications

Abstract

The 5G and beyond wireless networks target novel use-cases with stringent requirements on physical layer parameters such as latency, which may necessitate design decisions with trade-offs. Choosing a channel coding scheme which gives the best error performance may not be the most appropriate choice in mission-critical machine-type communications which require very low latency. In such contexts, convolutional codes may be preferable due to their faster decoding and simplicity. Motivated by this observation, we introduce a convolutionally encoded OSTBC system with SNR-adaptive constellations for low-latency and low-complexity use-cases. Numerical results obtained for the versatile Nakagami-m channel demonstrate that the investigated scheme results in considerable gains in terms of error performance and decoding latency. 1