2018 International Conference on Advanced Science and Engineering (ICOASE), Kurdistan Region, Iraq
Performance of BCH and RS Codes in MIMO
System Using MPFEC Diversity Technique
Ahmad Baheej Al-Khalil, IEEE Member
Department of Computer Science
College of Science
University of Duhok
Duhok-Iraq
Ahmad.al-khalil@uod.ac
Abstract—Multipath propagation phenomenon often causes
Inter-Symbol Interference (ISI) because several copies from the
originally transmitted signal travel in different directions and
reach the destination with different time delays. This paper
offers a new diversity technique to eliminate the effect and utilise
multipath propagation phenomenon. The new diversity
technique is known as MultiPath Forward Error Correction
(MPFEC) technique. The MPFEC technique considers some of
the multipath copies as an existing resource (redundant copies
of the transmitted signal) which can be utilised to enhance the
performance of Forward Error Correction coding (FEC)
techniques, hence saving significant channel resources otherwise
given to a feedback channel, without adding redundancy. Two
different coding techniques BCH and RS coding are used in the
simulation to perform the Bit Error Rate (BER) analysis. The
result reveals that BCH and RS codes performance can be
enhanced by utilising the MPFEC technique without increasing
the number of redundancy. This paper is implemented by using
MATLAB. The results are analysed and compared.
Keywords— Multipath, Phenomenon, FEC, BCH, RS,
Alamouti, MIMO, BER, SNR
I. INTRODUCTION
The current demand for higher reliability and transmission
rate with a fixed broadband communication and low latency
puts more pressure on designing new FEC coding techniques
to utilise the bandwidth better. Also, the error-free of reliable
transmission of information is a critical issue of modern
wireless communication [1]. The wireless channels typically
impose multipath propagation [2], which bases on the fact
that when a signal travels through a wireless channel, it will
be received at the receiver via different paths at a slightly
different time besides the direct line of sight (LoS) signal.
LoS signal is the straight signal between the sender and the
receiver. Typically, the strongest signal is the signal travels
through the LoS path. The multipath phenomenon is
occurring because of the diffraction, scattering, and reflection
of the transmitted signal by objects in the environment.
Furthermore, the multipath propagation can also be generated
by refraction caused by the medium [3]. Consequently, the
received signal will suffer from Inter Symbol Interference
(ISI) which leads to fading (signal distortion and burst errors)
[4]. The transmitted wave can also be reflected by objects
before reaching the receiver. On the other hand, the sharp
edges of objects which have irregular surfaces can also
diffract the transmitted signal. Moreover, when the signal is
978-1-5386-6696-8/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE
122
Alyaa Al-Barrak, IEEE Member
Computer Science Department
College of Science
University of Baghdad
Baghdad-Iraq
Alyaa.Al-Barrak@scbaghdad.edu.iq
dispersed by objects having dimensions results in, several
copies of the signal travelling in a different direction, this is
known as signal scattering.
The wireless communication systems have several
methods to deal with ISI and provide robust communication.
Diversity is one of the most widely used methods to provide
robust communication [5]. It is mainly used in wireless
communication for combatting fading, co-channel
interference and avoiding error bursts. This technique
attempts to produce uncorrelated faded copies of Los signal
provided with the hope that no less than one of these signals
will be received correctly at the receiver [6]. There are
different methods to obtain diversity such as time diversity,
antenna diversity, etc. The reliability of the wireless
communication system can be improved more by combining
different diversity techniques. For example, the time diversity
which obtained by channel coding can be combined with the
antenna diversity.
In 2017, a new diversity technique depended on the
propagation delay and transmission length between the
multipath components to employe the multipath phenomenon
to provide the receiver with multiple copies of the transmitted
signal. This method is known as MPFEC diversity technique
[14]. MPFEC technique has been used to improve the
performance of BCH and RS over Single-Input Single-
Output (SISO) system under BPSK modulation scheme [15].
While this paper analysis the effectiveness of utilising the
multipath phenomenon on the performance of BCE and RS
codes over Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) with
Alamouti Space-Time Block Codes (STBC) wireless
communication system.
The rest of this paper is arranged as follows. In section II
the forward error correction codes is explained. The
Multipath components separation is demonstrated in section
III. While in section IV proposed methodology is discussed.
In section V the column weight multipath combiner is
presented. Simulation parameters and results are described in
section VI with the conclusions in section VII.
II. FORWARD ERROR CORRECTION CODE
Forward Error Correction (FEC) codes can be considered
as a form of time diversity [6]. The investment of FEC
requires either the rate of the transmission must be decreased
or increasing channel bandwidth [4]. The high transmission
 2018 International Conference on Advanced Science and Engineering (ICOASE), Kurdistan Region, Iraq
rate and reliability need an FEC technique with high error
correction capability and high bandwidth. However, the
bandwidth is a substantial issue for communication. For that
reason, it’s not a wise decision to increase the bandwidth [8].
Due to the fact of FEC with low latency, have low error
correction capability [9], the finding a method to improve the
performance of FEC without raising the number of redundant
bits as well as has low latency is one of the main challenges.
So, to increase the error correction capability of these
techniques, the number of the redundant bits have to be
raised. On the other hand, the other FEC techniques with high
error correction capability and reached Shannon’s limit [10]
have high latency and low code rate. Therefore, the highly
reliable communication system means low transmission rate
or high latency or both. This is obvious in the channel coding
techniques that approached Shannon’s limit such as Turbo,
LDPC and Polar codes [11] [12] [13].
Finding a method to improve the performance of the
coding technique and keep low complexity and latency is a
challenge because the complexity and latency of coding
methods increase exponentially with the number of
redundancy and system performance. Therefore, rather than
attacking the coding design problem directly, the multipath
phenomenon in the wireless communication can be utilised
to enhance the coding techniques performance with low
complexity combiner and without affecting the complexity of
FEC codes [14] [15].
Any block code or convolutional code maybe applied to
enhance the MIMO performance [16]. This paper will present
BCH and RS codes performance over MIMO system before
and after using the MPFEC technique. Also, the paper shows
how the multipath phenomenon can be considered as an
existing resource that enhance the FEC code performance.
III. MULTIPATH PHENOMENON
In wireless communication, multipath is a propagation
phenomenon that occurs because of diffraction, scattering,
and reflection of the transmitted signal by objects in the
environment [2] Fig. 1. Multipath propagation bases on the
fact that when a signal travels through a wireless channel, it
will be received at the receiver via different paths at a
different time besides the direct Line of Sight (LoS) signal.
Fig. 1. Multipath propagation.
All paths in multipath propagation differ in their propagation
delay and transmission length. Therefore, the receiver can
separate and receive two or more copies from the transmitted
signal if the following condition is satisfied [14] Fig. 2.
123
𝑠𝑝𝑒𝑒𝑑 𝑜𝑓 𝑙𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡 3.0 × 108 𝑚𝑠 −1
→ ≤ 𝑇𝐿, (1)
𝑐ℎ𝑖𝑝 𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑒 𝑐ℎ𝑖𝑝 𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑒
Where TL represents the minimum transmission length. In
this case, the delay time (τ) needed to receive an uncorrelated
path is:
𝑇𝐿 𝑇𝐿
𝜏= = (2)
𝑠𝑝𝑒𝑒𝑑 𝑜𝑓 𝑙𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡 3.0 × 108 𝑚𝑠 −1
Fig. 2. Two Pulses in Time-Variant Multipath [24]
For example, in the wideband code division multiple
access (WCDMA) receiver, if the chip rate is 3.84 Mcps then
TL will be at less than 78 m, and the chip duration or
multipath delay τ is equal to 0.26 µs, which will be enough to
separate the multipath components to obtain more than one
copy. In order to provide a wireless communication system
with a high data transmission rate, these copies are considered
as redundant replicas of the desired signal and employed to
increase the error correction capability of RS and BCH codes
without adding more redundant bits.
IV. PROPOSED METHODOLOGY
The MATLAB simulator is used to simulation the
coding/decoding of BCH and RS codes. Fig. 3. represents the
block diagram of coded Alamouti MIMO wireless system
with the existing of multipath propagation.
Fig. 3. Coded Alamouti MIMO wireless communication system with
multipath propagation. CWMC is Column Weight Multipath Combiner.
At the sender side, two antennas are used to transmit the
signal. The random number generator block generates k bits
sequence of a random number of 0 and 1. The k bits are
mapped into n bits by the BCH/RS encoder block. Then, the
modulation block modulates n bits into a waveform signal.
The BPSK scheme is used for modulation. The AWGN and
 2018 International Conference on Advanced Science and Engineering (ICOASE), Kurdistan Region, Iraq
Rayleigh noises are added to the modulated signal by using
the wireless channel block. Also, it used to generate V paths
beside the LoS. Moreover, the effect of the actual properties
of the signal are analysed and study by using the channel
block.
At the receiver side, one or two antennas is used to receive
the transmitted signal LoS and V copies from the transmitted
signal (Non-Line of Sight (NLoS)). L signals will be chosen
((L-1) signals from V and LoS signal). The (L-1) NLoS
signals are chosen by using a threshold. The threshold
represents the minimum SNR that can be accepted. Each
NLoS signal can be considered as a copy of the LoS if its
SNR greater than or equal to the threshold. The threshold
value relies on the SNR of LoS, and it can be any value
between 40% to 75% from the LoS SNR. After selection L
signals (L should be odd integer number), the demodulation
block demodulates them. Then, the demodulated signals are
combined into one strong signal by using the Column Weight
Multipath Combiner (CWMC). CWMC is a low complexity
combiner to combine the NLoS and is based on the hamming
weight. The resulting signal decoding by BCH/RS decoder
block to recover the transmitted signal. The BER is used to
evaluate and compare the performance of coded Alamouti
MIMO system in various situations before and after utilising
the multipath phenomenon. For this purpose, the BER
calculator block is designed.
V. COLUMN WEIGHT MULTIPATH COMBINER
This paper proposes a combiner based on Hamming weight
(wh) to combine the LoS and NLoS signals. This combiner
receives L copies from one transmitted signal as the input (L
should be an odd number and include the LoS signal), then
arranges them in an L × N matrix:
𝑐11 𝑐21 … 𝑐1×𝑁
𝑐21 𝑐22 … 𝑐2×𝑁
𝐿𝑐 = 𝑐31 𝑐32 … 𝑐3×𝑁 (3)
… …
⋱ ⋮
[𝑐𝐿1 𝑐𝐿2 … 𝑐𝐿×𝑁 ]
(4)
where i = 1, 2, …, L, j = 1, 2… N, and yij represents the
combiner output. For example, we assume five different
codewords (L = 5) which are ten bits long (N = 10) each:
C1= [0101011000], C2 = [1111011000], C3 = [0000011000],
C4 = [1111111111], and C5 = [0000000000].
The matrix will be like the below:
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After calculating w1,1, w1,2, w1,3, …, w1,10, Y will be:
Y = [0 1 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 0].
VI. SIMULATION RESULTS
The proposed approach simulation is explained in this
section. The performance gains of the proposed system are
analysed through BER versus SNR curves plotted on a
logarithmic vertical scale. The threshold is 40% from the LoS
SNR. The LoS SNR of the channel was varied from 0dB to
25dB with BER measured at 1 dB increments. The simulation
shows the performance of BCH and RS codes which have one
error correction capability with and without MPFEC
technique over AWGN and Rayleigh channels under a binary
environment over a 2×1 and 2×2 Alamouti MIMO system. In
the simulation, MPFEC utilised three paths (3p) (one LoS and
two NLoS) signals. Also, the results show a comparison
between the codes which have e=1 and used MPFEC
technique with the codes that have e=2 and did not use
MPFEC technique. The codeword lengths are varied N=15,
127, and 255 bits/symbols, while the uncodeword lengths are
varied where the minimum K= 7 and maximum K= 253
bits/symbols. In the simulation, BPSK modulation employed
to make the work comparable with over, but any modulation
scheme can be utilised.
A. BCH and RS codes over 2×1 Alamouti MIMO
BCH(15, 11), BCH(255, 247), RS(15,13) and
RS(255,253) codes can correct one error (e=1). While two
errors (e=2) can be corrected by using BCH(15, 7), BCH(255,
239), RS(15,11) and RS(255,251) codes. Fig. 4, 5 reveal that
BER for BCH(15, 11), and BCH(255, 247) codes is improved
by using the MPFEC techinque. BCH and RS codes
performance is approximately enhanced by 4.5dB and 3.5dB
for BCH(15, 11), and BCH(255, 247) codes respectively over
AWGN channel at a BER of 10-3. While is improved by 10dB
and 11dB approximately over Rayleigh channel. Moreover,
the results show that the BER performance even better than
the codes with e=2. The performance of BER is roughly
improved for BCH(15, 11), and BCH(255, 247) codes by 1dB
and 2dB respectively over AWGN channel at a BER of 10-3.
Whilst by 4.5dB and 8.5dB over Rayleigh channel.
Fig. 6, 7 show the same results for RS codes that can correct
one and two errors. The BER performance of RS(15, 13), and
RS(255, 253) codes is enhanced almost by 3dB for both codes
over AWGN channel at a BER of 10-3. Whilst is improved by
8dB and more than 9dB approximately over Rayleigh
channel. Moreover, the results show that the BER
performance even better than the codes that have e=2. The
performance of BER is roughly improved for RS(15, 13), and
RS(255, 253) codes by 0.5dB and 1dB respectively over
AWGN channel at a BER of 10-3. While by 3.5dB and 8dB
over Rayleigh channel.
B. BCH and RS codes over 2×2 Alamouti MIMO
Similarly, Fig. 8, 9 show that the perfomance of all codes
with one error correction capability is increased over AWGN
and Rayleigh channels. The BCH(15, 11), and BCH(255,
 2018 International Conference on Advanced Science and Engineering (ICOASE), Kurdistan Region, Iraq

247) codes performance is enhanced roughly enhanced by

4dB over AWGN channel at a BER of 10-3. While is
improved by 9dB and 12.5dB approximately over Rayleigh
channel. Moreover, the results reveal that the BER
perfomance even better than the codes that have two errors
correction capability. The performance of BER is
approximately improved for BCH(15, 11), and BCH(255,
247) codes by 1.5dB and 3dB recpectively over AWGN
channel. Whilst by 4dB and 9.5dB over Rayleigh channel at
a BER of 10-3.
The RS(15, 13), and RS(255, 253) codes BER
performance is improved almost by 2.5dB and 3dB
recpectively over AWGN channel. While is improved by 8dB
and mor than 9dB approximately over Rayleigh channel at a
BER of 10-3. Furthermore, the simulation results reveal that
the BER perfomance of RS(15, 11), and RS(255, 251) codes
is less than of RS(15, 13), and RS(255, 253) codes. The BER
performance is roughly enhanced by 1dB and 2dB for RS(15,
13), and RS(255, 253) codes recpectively over AWGN
channel. Whilst over Rayleigh channel improved by 3dB and
9.5dB at a BER of 10-3 (see Fig. 10 and 11).

Fig.5. BER vs SNR of BCH code has e=1 without and with using MPFEC
and BCH code has e=2 without using MPFEC over 2x1 Alumouti system
under Rayleigh channel.

Fig.4. BER vs SNR of BCH code has e=1 without and with using MPFEC
and BCH code has e=2 without using MPFEC over 2x1 Alumouti system
under AWGN channel.
Fig.6. BER vs SNR of RS code has e=1 without and with using MPFEC and
RS code has e=2 without using MPFEC over 2x1 Alumouti system under
AWGN channel.

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 2018 International Conference on Advanced Science and Engineering (ICOASE), Kurdistan Region, Iraq

Fig.7 BER vs SNR of RS code has e=1 without and with using MPFEC and
RS code has e=2 without using MPFEC over 2x1 Alumouti system under
Rayleigh channel.
Fig.9. BER vs SNR of BCH code has e=1 without and with using MPFEC
and BCH code has e=2 without using MPFEC over 2x2 Alumouti system
under Rayleigh channel.

Fig.10. BER vs SNR of RS code has e=1 without and with using MPFEC
Fig.8. BER vs SNR of BCH code has e=1 without and with using MPFEC and RS code has e=2 without using MPFEC over 2x2 Alumouti system
and BCH code has e=2 without using MPFEC over 2x2 Alumouti system under AWGN channel.
under AWGN channel.

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 2018 International Conference on Advanced Science and Engineering (ICOASE), Kurdistan Region, Iraq
Fig.11 BER vs SNR of RS code has e=1 without and with using MPFEC
and RS code has e=2 without using MPFEC
over 2x2 Alumouti system under Rayleigh channel.
VII. CONCLUSIONS
This paper has investigated the BER performance of BCH
and RS codes with MPFEC technique by using 2×1 and 2×2
Alamouti (STBC) MIMO systems with BPSK modulation
schemes. The simulation results show that the performance
and error correction capability of BCH and RS codes can be
increased by utilising existing resources without raising the
number of redundant bits/symbols. Furthermore, it reveals
that the multipath phenomenon can be considered as an
advantage rather than as a disadvantage. The BER
performance of BCH and RS codes that have one error
correction capability has been improved. Moreover, its
enhanced to be even better than the BCH and RS codes that
have two errors correction capability over 2×1 and 2×2
Alamouti MIMO systems. The improvement on the
performance of overall system of 2×1 and 2×2 Alamouti
MIMO systems, nearly the same. This is achieved through
using new technique known as MPFEC. This technique
utilised the redundant copies of the transmitted signal (LoS)
that produced from the multipath propagation (NLoS) in the
wireless communication. Moreover, a new combiner method
that have a low complexity called Hamming weight combiner
is used to combine the redundant copies. The improvement in
the performance of BCH and RS codes increased by raising
the number of combined paths.
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