Combination of High-Order Modulation and Non-Binary LDPC Codes over GF(7) for Non-Linear Satellite Channels

Abstract

High-order modulations are necessary to improve the bandwidth efficiency of the satellite communication system. However, the non-linear characteristic of satellite channels limits the application of high-order modulations. In this paper, we propose a new 7-point constellation which is expected to be effectively applied to the satellite communication system, and combine it with non-binary low-density parity-check (NB-LDPC) codes over Galois field GF(7) to guarantee the reliability of the data transmission. The exact expression for the average symbol error probability (SEP) of 7-order quadrature amplitude modulation (7-QAM) over the Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) channel is derived, and the non-linear distortion over satellite channels is also analyzed. Simulation results reveal that, compared with the traditional 8-order phase-shift keying (8-PSK), the 7-QAM method can achieve about 3 dB gain over the AWGN channel without channel coding at symbol error rate (SER) of 10 - 6 . Moreover, the proposed combined coded modulation scheme also has better SER performance than the NB-LDPC coded 8-PSK modulation scheme over the non-linear satellite channel.