Unity-Rate Coding Improves the Iterative Detection Convergence of Autoencoder-Aided Communication Systems

Abstract

A forward error correction (FEC) and unity-rate coded (URC) autoencoder (AE)-assisted communication system is proposed for the first time, which relies on soft iterative decoding for attaining a vanishingly low error probability. The AE-demapper is specifically designed for directly calculating the extrinsic logarithmic likelihood ratios (LLRs), which can be directly entered into the URC decoder for soft iterative decoding. This avoids the potential degradation due to the conversion of symbol probabilities to bit LLRs. A comprehensive capacity analysis of the AE is performed, which demonstrates the capacity advantage of the AE-aided constellation design over its conventional quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM)/ phase shift keying (PSK) counterpart. Furthermore, we carry out its EXtrinsic Information Transfer (EXIT) chart analysis, which indicates that as a benefit of our URC, the EXIT curve always reaches the [1,1] point of perfect convergence, leading to a vanishingly low error probability. More explicitly, our bit error ratio (BER) and block error ratio (BLER) results demonstrate that the proposed FEC-URC-AE system achieves significant iterative gains both in additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and Rayleigh channels, outperforming both its model-based FEC-AE and its conventional coded QAM/QPSK counterparts.