Parameter Estimation of Turbo Code Encoder

Abstract

The problem of reconstruction of a channel code consists of finding out its design parameters solely based on its output. This paper investigates the problem of reconstruction of parallel turbo codes. Reconstruction of a turbo code has been addressed in the literature assuming that some of the parameters of the turbo encoder, such as the number of input and output bits of the constituent encoders and puncturing pattern, are known. However in practical noncooperative situations, these parameters are unknown and should be estimated before applying reconstruction process. Considering such practical situations, this paper proposes a novel method to estimate the above-mentioned code parameters. The proposed algorithm increases the efficiency of the reconstruction process significantly by judiciously reducing the size of search space based on an analysis of the observed channel code output. Moreover, simulation results show that the proposed algorithm is highly robust against channel errors when it is fed with noisy observations.