A Universal Low-Complexity Demapping Algorithm for Non-Uniform Constellations

Abstract

A non-uniform constellation (NUC) can effectively reduce the gap between bit-interleaved coded modulation (BICM) capacity and Shannon capacity, which has been utilized in recent wireless broadcasting systems. However, the soft demapping algorithm needs a lot of Euclidean distance (ED) calculations and comparisons, which brings great demapping complexity to NUC. A universal low-complexity NUC demapping algorithm is proposed in this paper, which creates subsets based on the quadrant of the two-dimensional NUC (2D-NUC) received symbol or the sign of the in-phase (I)/quadrature (Q) component of the one-dimensional NUC (1D-NUC) received symbol. ED calculations and comparisons are only carried out on the constellation points contained in subsets. To further reduce the number of constellation points contained in subsets, the proposed algorithm takes advantage of the condensation property of NUC and regards a constellation cluster containing several constellation points as a virtual point. Analysis and simulation results show that, compared with the Max-Log-MAP algorithm, the proposed algorithm can greatly reduce the demapping complexity of NUC with negligible performance loss.