Tiled-building-block trellis encoders

A method of trellis encoding, comprising:

• processing a first set of input bits using a first convolutional coder encoder to generate a first set of coded bits, wherein the first set of coded bits are associated with a particular building-block signal point of a coded-constellation-building block that comprises a clustered set of building-block signal points, and the first convolutional encoder is selected to increase a measure of minimum squared Euclidian distance (MSED) between coded sequences of building-block signal points of the coded-constellation-building block beyond a measure of squared Euclidian distance between individual building-block signal points in the coded-constellation-building block;
• processing a second set of input bits using a second convolutional encoder to generate a second set of coded bits, wherein the second set of coded bits are associated with a tiling point of a tiling constellation, wherein the second convolutional encoder is selected to increase a measure of MSED between coded sequences of tiling points of the tiling constellation beyond a measure of squared Euclidian distance between individual tiling points in the tiling constellation;
• and
• jointly mapping the first and second sets of coded bits onto a transmission signal point, wherein the jointly mapping is performed in such a way that when each admissible combination of the first set of coded bits corresponding to a respective member of the clustered set of building-block signal points is jointly mapped with the second set of coded bits, each such respective jointly mapped transmission signal point is located closer to the tiling point than any second tiling point in the tiling constellation.

A trellis encoder, comprising:

• a first trellis coder that is configured to process a first set of input bits to determine a first set of coded bits that correspond to a particular building-block signal point of a coded-constellation building block, wherein the coded-constellation-building block comprises a plurality of building-block signal points;
• a second trellis encoder that is configured to process a second set of input bits to determine a second set of coded bits that correspond to a tiling point of tiling constellation;
• and
• a signal mapper configured to jointly map the first and second sets of coded bits onto a transmission signal point, wherein the jointly mapping is performed in such a way that when each admissible set of the first set of coded bits corresponding to a respective member of the clustered set of building-block signal points is jointly mapped with the second set of coded bits, each such respective jointly mapped transmission signal point is located closer to the tiling point than any second tiling point in the tiling constellation.

A trellis encoder, comprising:

• a first trellis encoder that is configured to process a first set of input bits to determine a first set of coded bits that correspond to a particular building-block signal point of a coded-constellation building block, wherein the coded-constellation-building block comprises a plurality of building-block signal points;
• a second trellis encoder that is configured to process a second set of input bits to determine a second set of coded bits that correspond to a tiling point of tiling constellation;
• and
• a signal mapper configured to jointly map the first and second sets of coded bits onto a transmission signal point, wherein the jointly mapping is performed in such a way that when each admissible first set of coded bits corresponding to a respective member of the clustered set of building-block signal points is jointly mapped with the second set of coded bits, each such respective jointly mapped transmission signal point is located closer to the tiling point than any second tiling point in the tiling constellation;
• wherein the coded-constellation-building block is a member of the group consisting of (1) a two-dimensional coded-constellation-building block that includes four signal points that are distributed in an I/Q plane of the signal space, wherein the I/Q plane includes an I-axis that corresponds to an in-phase signal component direction and a Q-axis that corresponds to a quadrature-phase signal component direction and (2) a coded-constellation-building block that is four-dimensional and includes four signal points, a first two of which are distributed in a first I/Q plane of a signal space during a first signaling interval and a second two of which are distributed in a second I/Q plane during a second signaling interval, wherein each of the first and second I/Q planes include a respective I-axis that corresponds to an in-phase signal component direction and a respective Q-axis that corresponds to a quadrature-phase signal component direction;
• wherein the second trellis encoder includes a first independent convolutional encoder and a second independent convolutional encoder that respectively process first and second independent subsets of the second set of input bits to produce first and second independently coded subsets of the second set of coded bits;
• wherein the first independently coded subset of the second set of coded bits is mapped to an I-component of the tiling point and the second independently coded subset of the second set of coded bits is mapped to an Q-component of the tiling point;
• wherein the tiling constellation comprises a set of integer points in an I/Q plane that includes an I-axis that corresponds to an in-phase signal component direction and a Q-axis that corresponds to a quadrature-phase signal component direction;
• and
• wherein combination of the first and second independent convolutional encoders and the mapping of the first and second independently coded subsets onto the I-component and the Q-component are implemented as first and second LSB trellis encoders to thereby generate an LSB-encoded tiling constellation over the I/Q plane;
• and
• wherein the transmission signal point is transmitted to a receiver that comprises a multistage decoder that processes a received version of the transmission signal point using a first decoder to determine a building-block signal point decision and then to feeds bits corresponding to the building-block signal point decision to a second decoder which uses the bits corresponding to the building-block signal point decision and information derived from the received version of the transmission signal point to determine a tiling point decision.

A trellis encoder, comprising:

• a first trellis encoder that is configured to process a first set of input bits to determine a first set of coded bits that correspond to a particular building-block signal point of a coded-constellation building block, wherein the coded-constellation-building block comprises a plurality of building-block signal points;
• a second trellis encoder that is configured to process a second set of input bits to determine a second set of coded bits that correspond to a tiling point of tiling constellation;
• and
• a signal mapper configured to jointly map the first and second sets of coded bits onto a transmission signal point, wherein the jointly mapping is performed in such a way that when each admissible first set of coded bits corresponding to a respective member of the clustered set of building-block signal points is jointly mapped with the second set of coded bits, each such respective jointly mapped transmission signal point is located closer to the tiling point than any second tiling point in the tiling constellation;
• wherein N is a positive integer and the coded-constellation-building block is (4×N)-dimensional and includes at least four building-block signal points, a first two of which are distributed in a first I/Q plane of a signal space during a first signaling interval and a second two of which are distributed in a second I/Q plane of the signal space during a second signaling interval, wherein each of the first and second I/Q planes include a respective I-axis that corresponds to an in-phase signal component direction and a respective Q-axis that corresponds to a quadrature-phase signal component direction;
• the tiling constellation is a subset of a (4×N)-dimensional integer lattice of a (4×N)-dimensional signal space;
• and
• the second trellis encoder is a (4×N)-dimensional constellation-contracted Wei encoder.