1284
8, AUGUST 2012
Adaptive Demodulation Using Rateless Codes Based on
Maximum a Posteriori Probability
Kadir Turk and Pingyi Fan, Senior Member, IEEE
Abstract—Adaptive demodulation (ADM) using rateless codes
has been considered as an alternative solution for rate adaptive
systems. In this paper, we shall propose a maximum a posteriori
probability (MAP) based ADM algorithm to select the bits
to demodulate rather than using decision regions set (DRS)
as in conventional ADM systems. Its main difference is that
our demodulated bit selection is implemented by evaluating all
bits in the data packet instead of per symbol. Therefore, the
probability of discarding incorrect bits will increase, resulting
in bit error rate (BER) performance improvement. In addition,
our developed technique can adjust the demodulated bits rate to
any rational rate and can be easily applied to any modulation
scheme. Various simulations show that our proposed MAP based
ADM technique significantly outperforms the conventional ADM
algorithm in term of BER.
Index Terms—Bayesian criteria, rateless codes, soft decoding,
belief propagation.
I. I NTRODUCTION
A DAPTIVE demodulation (ADM) using rateless codes,
was first proposed in [1], as an alternative solution for
rate adaptive systems that include adaptive modulation systems
and incremental redundancy systems. In adaptive modulation
systems, it dynamically adjusts the modulation level at the
transmitter according to the quality of the communication
channel in order to obtain high spectral efficiency. For incre-
mental redundancy systems, it first divides the encoded data
packets with low level coding rate into smaller sub-packets
and then sends them one by one until the receiver collects
enough packets for successive decoding [1]. In ADM systems,
contrary to these two conventional rate adaptive systems, fixed
modulated and encoded data stream is demodulated at a non-
fixed rate. At the transmitter, the data packet is encoded
with a rateless fountain code such as Luby transform (LT)
or Raptor code and modulated with one of the standard
modulation schemes. At the receiver end, received signal is
adaptively demodulated according to the channel condition. If
the received signal to noise ratio (SNR) is not high enough to
demodulate the message to reach a predefined bit error rate
Manuscript received April 9, 2012. The associate editor coordinating the
review of this letter and approving it for publication was M. Ardakani.
The work of K. Turk was supported by The Scientific and Technological
Research Council of Turkey under the 2219 program. The work of P. Fan
was partly supported by the China Major State Basic Research Development
Program (973 Pro-gram) No. 2012CB316100(2) and research grant of INC,
Chinese University of Hong Kong.
K. Turk is with the Department of Electrical Electronics Engineering, Ka-
radeniz Technical University, Trabzon 61080, Turkey, and the Department of
Electronic Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China (e-mail: kadir@
ktu.edu.tr).
P. Fan is with the Department of Electronic Engineering, Tsinghua Uni-
versity, Beijing 100084, China, and INC, Chinese University of Hong Kong
(e-mail: fpy@tsinghua.edu.cn).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LCOMM.2012.060112.120772
1089-7798/12$31.00 
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IEEE COMMUNICATIONS LETTERS, VOL. 16, NO.
(BER), demodulation level is then decreased by treating some
of the bits in each symbol as erasure and being discarded.
In this case, only those bits that can be correctly decoded
with high probability in each symbol will be demodulated.
This selective demodulation is implemented by using several
modified constellation diagram called decision regions set
(DRS) at the receiver. Since the data message is encoded using
fountain code at the transmitter, it can be reconstructed no
matter which bits were discarded.
In [1], ADM systems were given for 16-QAM and 16-
PSK modulation schemes, where the data bits are mapped
to modulated symbols by using standard constellation at the
transmitter but their decision regions are modified to discard
bits whose error probabilities are higher than others in each
modulated symbol. To do so, two DRSs, 2-DRS and 3-
DRS, were given for both modulation schemes according
to binary composite hypothesis test that only demodulate 2
and/or 3 bits among 4 bits for each symbol, respectively. In [2],
ADM systems were presented for 16-DPSK and 16-DAPSK
modulation schemes.
In this paper, we shall propose a new technique for ADM
systems to select the bits to demodulate instead of using DRSs.
In [1] and [2], one or more bits are chosen to be discarded
among the bits for each symbol by using DRSs. In this
paper, our developed method will use a completely different
algorithm. First, we will estimate the maximum a posteriori
probability (MAP) for each bit in the received data packet and
then select the bits to be demodulated according to a threshold
level. The selection will be implemented by evaluating all
bits in the data packet instead of per symbol. Therefore, the
probability of discarding incorrect bits will increase, resulting
in BER performance improvement. The threshold level can
be adjusted based on the predefined BER level or else, which
we shall show it in Section II. Also, our developed algorithm
can be applied easily to any modulation scheme and the cor-
responding demodulation rate can be selected as any rational
rate value which relaxes the limitation of ADM systems in [1],
[2] with fixed number of bits in each symbol that is completely
depended on the selected modulation scheme.
II. S YSTEM M ODEL AND T HRESHOLD S ELECTION
Let bi,k represent the encoded information bit sequence
with a rateless code, where i is the bit index in a modulated
symbol and k is the symbol index in the symbol sequence.
Let xk = xIk + jxQk represent complex transmitted symbol
sequence which is obtained from L bits based on the mapping
rule xk = M (b0,k , ..., b(L−1),k ) of related modulation scheme.
The received complex symbol sequence over additive white
c 2012 IEEE
TURK and FAN: ADAPTIVE DEMODULATION USING RATELESS CODES BASED ON MAXIMUM A POSTERIORI PROBABILITY 1285

Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel can be written as


yk = yIk + jyQk = Es xk + nk (1)
where Es represents the signal energy, and nk represents P'c
P'e
a complex Gaussian noise sequence with each component P'd
having zero mean and a variance of σ 2 = N0 /2 per dimension. െ ‫ܧ‬௦
-t
0
+t
We assume that the energy of the received signal is normalized
to 1. Based on MAP criteria, one can get the log-likelihood Fig. 1. Conditional PDF with BPSK modulation for b0,k =0.
ratio (LLR) of bit bi,k as follows [3]
 
P (bi,k = 1|yk )
L (bi,k |yk ) = ln (2) Eqn. (5) can be rewritten as
P (bi,k = 0|yk )      
then, in the case of equiprobable symbols  1 Es 1 Es
Pd = erfc (1 − t) − erfc (1 + t) (6)
⎡  2

⎤ 2 N0 2 N0
exp −|ykN−A|
⎢ A∈{xk :bi,k =1} 0
⎥ where erfc(.) represents complementary error function,
L (bi,k |yk ) = ln ⎢
⎣ 
⎥ (3)
−|yk −B|2 ⎦ ∞
exp N0 2 2
B∈{xk :bi,k =0} erfc(x) = √ e−z dz.
π
where A and B are complex numbers and each of them stands x
for the value of related constellation point. The second part of the Eqn. (6) can be ignored when the
In ADM algorithms, if the received SNR is not high error probability is relatively low. In this case, the probability
enough to demodulate the message to reach a predefined BER of discarded bit can be approximated as
value, demodulation level is decreased. We shall decrease   
the demodulation level with completely different way. To  1 Es
Pd ≈ erfc (1 − t) (7)
do so, the bits whose absolute value of LLR smaller than 2 N0
a threshold level t are treated as non-demodulated bits and
Then, one can estimate the corresponding threshold value t
will be discarded (|L(bi,k |yk )| < t). The threshold level t can
by the following equation,
be determined by the required BER value or throughput etc.
In this paper, we consider the number of selected bits for erfc−1 (2Pd )
t≈1−  . (8)
demodulation to that of whole data bits ratio to determine Es /N0
the t. We will call this ratio as recovery ratio. Note that
This result indicates that the selected threshold t is completely
those discarded data bits can be easily reconstructed in the
determined by the recovery ratio 1−Pd and the received SNR.
receiver if the number of collected bits is slightly larger than
At the receiver end, the SNR can be estimated as in [5]. By
the data message length since the message is encoded by
using the fact that the total sum of the probabilities for all
using a rateless code which can produce theoretically infinitive
events must be 1, it can be easily seen that both the new error
encoded bits. For simplicity we first consider binary-phase
probability Pe and the new correctly received bit probability
shift keying (BPSK) modulation. The LLR for BPSK can be
Pc must be extended by a factor of 1 − Pd after selected bits
calculated by [4]
are discarded. Then, we can evaluate the new error probability
4 by
L (b0,k |yk ) = yk (4)
N0 Pe
Pe = . (9)
Fig. 1 illustrates the conditional probability density function 1 − Pd
(PDF) with BPSK modulation for b0,k = 0. In this figure Finally the error probability of the system for BPSK modula-
Pe , Pd and Pc represent error probability, discarded bit prob- tion in the case of equiprobable symbols can be given by
ability and the correctly received bit probability, respectively.   
Note that after discarding the bits whose absolute value of 1 Es
Pe =  erfc (1 + t) . (10)
LLR smaller than t, the area between −t and t in Fig. 1, which 2(1 − Pd ) N0
is represented by Pd , will be removed from conditional prob- Likewise, the threshold value and error probability can be done
ability density function. This value is equal to complementary for 16-QAM modulation, too. For a relatively high SNR, its
of recovery ratio. Since the calculation of LLR value by Eqn. LLR values for 16-QAM can be approximated as [6]
(4) does not change the SNR, the corresponding probability ⎧
of discarded bit, Pd , is given by ⎨ 2(yIk + z) if yIk < −2z
L (b0,k |yk ) ≈ yIk if |yIk | ≤ 2z (11)
∞  
2  ⎩
1 2(yIk − z) if yIk > 2z
Pd = √ exp − yk + Es /N0 dyk
πN0 L (b1,k |yk ) ≈ −|yIk | + 2z (12)
−t
⎧
∞  
2  ⎨ 2(yQk + z) if yQk < −2z
1
− √ exp − yk + Es /N0 dyk (5) L (b2,k |yk ) ≈ yQk if |yQk | ≤ 2z (13)
πN0 ⎩
t 2(yQk − z) if yQk > 2z

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1286 IEEE COMMUNICATIONS LETTERS, VOL. 16, NO. 8, AUGUST 2012

L (b3,k |yk ) ≈ −|yQk | + 2z (14) 100-1

where z is a normalization factor for the constellation points

of 16-QAM to ensure
√ that the average energy over all symbols 100-2
is 1 and z = 1/ 10 . Then, probability of discarded bit Pd
for 16-QAM can be approximated by
      100-3
 3 Es 3 Es
Pd ≈ erfc (z − t) − erfc (z + t) (15)
8 N0 8 N0

BER
100-4 16QAM
By numerical result, we observe that the second term in Eqn. 16QAM 0.8 Th.
(15) can be ignored when the SNR is relatively high. So we 16QAM 0.8 Sim.
16QAM 0.6 Th.
get the approximated threshold for 16-QAM as follows 16QAM 0.6 Sim.
100-5
erfc−1 (8Pd /3)
BPSK
BPSK 0.8 Th.
t≈z−  . (16) BPSK 0.8 Sim.
Es /N0 BPSK 0.6 Th.
BPSK 0.6 Sim.
Then the error probability of the system for 16-QAM modu- 100-6
lation can be given by -5 0 5 10 15 20
   ES/N0 (dB)
3 Es
Pe ≈ erfc (z + t) . (17)
8(1 − Pd ) N0 Fig. 2. BER performance of MAP based ADM for BPSK and 16-QAM
modulation schemes in AWGN channel before decoder.

III. LT C ODES AND S OFT BP D ECODING

Although rateless codes were originally designed for binary
erasure channels (BEC), they can achieve error correction
with belief propagation (BP) decoding over binary symmetric
channel (BSC) and the AWGN channel [7]. In this paper,
we shall adopt the following updating equations of soft BP
decoding in [4] to our developed decoding algorithm,
⎡  (l) ⎤
 
(l) L(b |y ) mi ,o
mo,i = 2 tanh−1 ⎣tanh ⎦
i,k k
tanh
2 
2
i =i
 (18)
(l+1) (l)
mi,o = mo ,i
o =o
where tanh(.) and tanh−1 (.) represent hyperbolic tangent and
inverse hyperbolic tangent operations, respectively. A message
in the decoder is denoted by m and the superscript l denotes
the iteration number. mo,i , and mi,o denote the message sent
from the check node o to the variable node i and that from
the variable node i to the check node o, respectively. In this
case, the corresponding output of the BP decoder is given by
 (l)
v = L(bi,k |yk ) + mo,i (20)
o In Fig. 3, we compare the BER performance of our proposed
For completeness, we shall give a simple introduction to
LT codes. It is well known that Luby Transform (LT) codes
[8] are the first fountain codes that proven to be practical
on BEC. It generates a limitless stream of encoded symbols,
which are independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.), on
the fly or in advance. At the decoder, it can reconstruct the
source data from arbitrarily collected encoded symbols with
small decoding overhead. The process of LT encoding is given
briefly below.
1. Randomly choose a degree d from a degree distribution.
2. Choose, uniformly at random, d distinct inputs, and sum
them with modulo 2 [8].
The performance of LT codes are mainly depended on the
probability distribution ρ(d) of the degree. Degree distribution,
ρ(d), defined by Luby is ideal solution distribution. A better
performance can be achieved by robust soliton distribution as
explained in [8].
IV. N UMERICAL R ESULTS
In this section, we shall confirm the performance of our new
developed algorithm by simulation. We first consider the bit
error rate performance of our ADM system over an AWGN
channel. Fig. 2 shows some theoretical and simulation results
before decoder, which confirm our theoretical analysis is valid.
(19) Note that the fractional number denotes the recovery ratio.
For example, 0.8 means that the 20 percent of bits with the
smallest LLR values is discarded. Here the threshold level
is determined by simulation based on the recovery ratio. But
the same value of threshold level, for theoretical results, is
calculated by using Eqn. (8) and Eqn. (16) for BPSK and 16-
QAM, respectively. Comparing to conventional ADM system,
it is easy to see that our recovery ratio is flexible, which can
be selected as any fractional number according to target bit
error rate performance, not like that with some fixed fractional
number in ADM system [1].
MAP based ADM (MAP-ADM) with that of conventional
ADM systems in [1], [2] for 16-QAM modulation scheme
before decoder. 2-DRS and 3-DRS represent the conventional
ADM technique which uses decision region sets for 16-QAM
demodulation to recover 2 bits and 3 bits among 4 bits per
symbol, respectively. 3 bits, 2 bits and 1 bit MAP represent
the results obtained by using our developed demodulation
algorithm, which their recovery ratio are 0.75, 0.5 and 0.25,
respectively. We also present the BER curve of conventional
BPSK, QPSK and 16-QAM as benchmarks. These results in
Fig. 3 clearly show that our proposed MAP-ADM technique
significantly outperforms the algorithm in [1], [2]. For ex-
ample, the SNR gain for 3 bits transmission by using our
MAP-ADM is about 5dB at 10−4 BER value but the SNR

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TURK and FAN: ADAPTIVE DEMODULATION USING RATELESS CODES BASED ON MAXIMUM A POSTERIORI PROBABILITY
100-1
100-2
100-3
BER
100-4
16QAM
3-DRS
3 bits(0.75) MAP
100-5 2-DRS
2 bits(0.5) MAP
QPSK
1 bit(0.25) MAP
BPSK
100-6
0 5 10 15
ES/N0 (dB)
Fig. 3. BER performance of MAP based ADM and conventional ADM for
16-QAM modulation scheme in AWGN channel before decoder.
gain of 3-DRS is only about 3dB at the same BER level.
One important observation is that the BER performance for
our developed ADM algorithm to recover 2 bits and 1 bit
in 16-QAM modulation is almost the same as that of QPSK
and BPSK modulation over an AWGN channel, respectively.
This indicates that by using our developed ADM algorithm,
even if the channel condition changes rapidly, a transmission
system can keep the same BER performance by adjusting
demodulation level at the receiver while the transmitter keeps
the same modulation and coding rate. This is the first time to
observe such a phenomenon, which shows such a contribution
is very significant, and it can be combined multiple modulation
schemes into one in the transmission system design while it
does not affect the BER performance significantly.
The BER performance results of our proposed MAP-ADM
and that of conventional ADM systems in [1], [2] for 16-QAM
modulation scheme after decoder over AWGN channels are
represented in Fig. 4. All schemes are encoded with a LT
code where its coding rate is 3/4 (data message length=5040,
recovered bits length=6720) and the degree distribution is
the robust soliton distribution with c = 0.03, δ = 0.5. A
soft decision BP decoder is employed for error correction
and reconstruction of data stream at the same time with the
maximum iteration number of 50. Simulation results show
that our proposed algorithm obtains significant SNR gain after
decoder, too. It gets 1.74 dB and 1.95 dB better SNR gains
for 2 and 3 bits than conventional ones at 10−4 BER value,
respectively. Note that the error floors with LT codes can
be remove by using well designed Raptor coding and soft
decision input BP decoder [4], [9].
V. C ONCLUSION
In this paper, we developed a new algorithm for ADM
system, based on MAP and presented an explicit LLR thresh-
old, which is the key parameter and can be used to improve
the system demodulation/decoding performance in terms of
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1287
1010
100-1
100-2
BER
100-3
100-4 16QAM
3-DRS
3 bits MAP
2-DRS
2 bits MAP
100-5
20 4 6 8 10 12 14 16
ES/N0 (dB)
Fig. 4. BER performance of MAP based ADM and conventional ADM for
16-QAM modulation scheme in AWGN channel with a LT code (5040, 6720)
(c = 0.03, δ = 0.5, coding rate 3/4).
the BER. Another main contribution is that by using our
developed ADM algorithm, even if the channel condition
changes rapidly, a transmission system can keep the same
BER performance by adjusting demodulation level at the
receiver while the transmitter keeps the same modulation and
coding rate. That is to say, by combining multiple modulation
schemes into one in a system design, it will not affect the
system BER performance significantly if our new developed
ADM algorithm is employed.
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