1394 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 56, NO.

9, SEPTEMBER 2008

Simple Construction of Multiple Interleavers:

Cyclically Shifting a Single Interleaver
Katsutoshi Kusume, Member, IEEE, and Gerhard Bauch, Senior Member, IEEE

(k) (k) (k)

Abstract—Utilizing multiple interleavers recently attracted in- b cj,i xj
creasing attention in many research areas. Interleaver generation Convolutional Rep. Πk Symbol
should be simple in order to avoid huge memory requirements encoder mapper
Nb N
for storing interleaving patterns. We propose to derive multiple Transmitter
interleavers by cyclically shifting and self-interleaving a common
mother interleaver in a few steps. Our focus is on the good user
(m) (k) (d) (k)
separation in interleave division multiple access systems. The Le (cj,i ) La (cj,i )

APP decoder
−1 (k)
proposed method may also find other application areas such as yj Πk L(d) (b )
−

MUD
multi-dimensional concatenated codes.
Πk
−
Index Terms—Interleaver design, multiple interleavers, per- (m) (k) (d) (k)
mutations, interleave division multiple access (IDMA), iterative La (cj,i ) Le (cj,i )
multiuser detection.
for K users Receiver

I. I NTRODUCTION Fig. 1. System model of IDMA.

S INGLE interleaver construction rules for turbo codes

have been relatively well-studied in the last years and
many proposals can be found in literature. Recently, multi-
separation in IDMA. A new practical method to generate
multiple interleavers is necessary.
ple interleavers attracted more and more attention in many
research areas such as code division multiple access (CDMA),
II. S YSTEM M ODEL
multi-dimensional concatenated codes, and interleave division
multiple access (IDMA), and so on. In most cases, multiple We consider the system model of IDMA in Fig. 1. In
interleavers are generated in a completely random manner and the following, we briefly summarize the system model and
only a few papers on the generation of multiple interleavers the iterative processing at the receiver. A detailed description
can be found in literature, e.g., [1]–[3]. A typical way to get in a more general setting can be found, e.g., in [4]. At the
(k)
K random interleavers of size N is independently repeating a transmitter, Nb information bits b of user k, k = 1, . . . , K,
random interleaver generation procedure K times. And the are encoded by a rate Rc convolutional code followed by
generation of individual random interleaver is drawing N a rate Rr repetition code. The resulting N code bits are
(k)
pseudo-random numbers from a uniform distribution, sorting interleaved by the user-distinct interleaver Πk to get cj,i .
(k) (k)
them, and the resulting sorting pattern is used as an interleaver. The pairs of bits cj,1 and cj,2 are mapped onto the complex
Simulation results in literature are often the performance (k)
symbols xj , which are elements of a QPSK constellation
averaged over a large number of interleaver realizations. This (k)
{ √12 + √2 , √12 − √j2 , − √12 + √j2 , − √12 − √j2 }. The symbols xj
j
is a convenient way to evaluate systems when the interleaver
are then transmitted over an AWGNchannel. The received
design itself is not the main focus. In practical systems, K (k)
signal can be expressed as yj = k=1 xj + ηj where
however, the above procedure is too complex and storing
the noise ηj is zero-mean complex Gaussian distributed with
multiple interleavers may require a prohibitively high amount
variance N0 /2 per real dimension.
of memory, particularly if variable block lengths have to be
The receiver applies iterative detection and decoding.
supported. Hence, we wish to have a simple construction rule
The multiuser detector (MUD) computes a posteriori log-
for interleavers which minimizes the required memory. (k)
likelihood ratio (LLR) about the code bits L(m) (cj,i ) =
In this article we focus on IDMA, e.g., [4], which has (k)
P (cj,i =+1 | yj )
a close relation to CDMA, but users are separated only log (k) based on the received values yj and on
P (cj,i =−1 | yj )
by user-distinct interleavers. Hence, multiple interleavers are (m) (k)
essential system components for IDMA. We will show that the a priori LLRs La (cj,i ) which are sent from the K
the conventional interleavers are insufficient for the user a posteriori probability (APP) decoders and are initialized
(m) (k) (k)
to zeros. The extrinsic LLRs Le (cj,i ) = L(m) (cj,i ) −
Paper approved by A. Anastasopoulos, the Editor for Iterative Detection, (m) (k)
Estimation and Coding of the IEEE Communications Society. Manuscript La (cj,i ) are deinterleaved and sent to the decoder as the
received November 7, 2006; revised May 17, 2007. This paper was presented (d) (k)
a priori LLRs La (cj,i ). For the QPSK modulation, the
in part at the International Symposium on Turbo Codes & Related Topics, (m) (k) (m) (k)
April 2006, and at the IEEE Global Telecommunications Conference on computation
√
of Le (cj,i ) can be simplified√
as Le (cj,1 ) =
Communications, November 2006. (k) (m) (k) (k)
The authors are with DOCOMO Euro-Labs, Landsbergerstr. 312, 80687
2 2
(k) 2
Re{ȳj } and Le (cj,2 ) = 2(k)22 Im{ȳj } where
σj σj
Munich, Germany (e-mail: kusume@docomolab-euro.com). (k) 2  (k ) (k) (k) (k)
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TCOMM.2008.060420. σj = k =k ρj + N0 , ρj = E[|xj − x̃j |2 ] =
0090-6778/08$25.00 
c 2008 IEEE
KUSUME and BAUCH: SIMPLE CONSTRUCTION OF MULTIPLE INTERLEAVERS: CYCLICALLY SHIFTING A SINGLE INTERLEAVER 1395

(k) (k)  (k ) (k) (k)

1 − |x̃j |2 , ȳj = yj − k =k x̃j , x̃j = E[xj ] =
(m) (k) (m) (k) √ Π τk Π τ k(c)
(tanh(La (cj,1 )/2) + j tanh(La (cj,2 )/2))/ 2, and E[·]
denotes expectation. The APP decoder computes improved (a) common interleaver Π and (b) common interleaver Π and
(k) (k) user delay τk cyclic shift τk(c)
a posteriori LLRs L(d) (cj,i ) about code bits and L(d) (b ) =
(c) (c)
Π τ k,1 Π τ k,D
(k)
P (b =+1)
log 
(k) about information bits taking into account the
P (b =−1)
code constraints. The APP decoding is a standard function
(d) (k)
and will not be described. The extrinsic LLRs Le (cj,i ) =
(k) (d) (k)
L(d) (cj,i ) − La (cj,i ) are sent to the MUD as the a priori Πk
(c) repeat (b) with multiple cyclic shifts τk,1 ,..., τk,D
(m) (k) (c) (c)
LLRs La (cj,i ) after interleaving. After some iterations,
(k)
taking the sign of L(d) (b ) gives the estimation of the
Fig. 2. (a) A common interleaver Π and a user delay τk , (b) a user cyclic
information bits. shift τk(c) , analogous to τk in (a), and (c) generation of interleaver Πk by
(c)
exploiting multiple cyclic shifts τk,d and a single common interleaver Π.
III. P REVIOUS W ORKS
In [1] the authors proposed a criterion to find multiple
interleavers for convolutionally coded CDMA systems where large delays of interleaver generation for large K. Unequal
the interleavers are limited to congruential interleavers due delays for different k may be unfavorable in a certain system
to its mathematical tractability. The permutation rule of a as well.
congruential interleaver of size N reads as:
πk (n) = sk + npk mod N for n = 0, . . . , N − 1, (1) IV. C YCLICALLY S HIFTED M ULTIPLE I NTERLEAVERS
Our design is inspired by some observations regarding
where sk is a starting integer index often set to 0, and pk
impacts of multipath channels and user asynchronism in
is an integer increment which must be relatively prime to
IDMA [5]. It turned out that user-asynchronism, i.e., different
N to ensure that each element is read out once and only
user transmission delays, has a positive impact on the user
once. Therefore, each interleaver is determined by the single
separation. Even when all users share a single common
parameter pk (and sk if non-zero). The idea in [1] is to find
interleaver in IDMA systems (in fact, it is not “interleave
user-specific congruential interleavers (i.e., to choose pk ’s) for
division” any more), user separation is still possible to some
a given convolutional code (a code is common for all users)
extent if user-distinct transmission delays are present. That is
such that the resulting interleavers yield good asymptotic
due to the fact that the interleaver cycle in a received sequence
distances between the effective code words after interleaving.
is shifted according to a user delay so that the deinterleaving
Unfortunately, the method has a strict limitation on block size
operation of certain user does not recover the original sequence
and cannot always find proper interleavers for a given block
orders of other users, thus other users’ signals are effectively
length N . This is particularly a problem for low rate codes
decorrelated.
since the large free distance causes the algorithm to demand
The observation leads us to a very simple strategy for
a large minimum required block size (cf. Theorem 2 in [1]).
generating multiple interleavers as summarized in Fig. 2. The
In [2] some heuristic rules were proposed for the genera-
aforementioned scenario is depicted in Fig. 2 (a) where τk
tion of a set of interleavers. Those heuristics are aiming at
denotes a user delay. Since user separation is still possible
either: (1) improving the maximum-likelihood (ML) bound or
when user delays are present, a common interleaver Π together
(2) minimizing the “inter-iteration gain reduction” (IIGR).
with a user delay τk can be virtually seen as a simple
However, as the authors stated, no recipe has been provided for
form of a user-distinct interleaver. However, intentional user
a deterministic construction of interleavers in general; neither
transmission timing control (to introduce user-asynchronism)
for improving the ML bound nor for minimizing the IIGR.
is not preferred from a system design point of view and it is
A deterministic method was provided only in the particu-
even hard to realize in some scenarios such as decentralized
lar subset of congruential interleavers defined in (1) for an
systems. Therefore, we propose to exploit a cyclic shift τk(c)
(n0 , k0 , m) terminated convolutional code1 . More specifically,
(the superscript ‘(c)’ indicates cyclic) as illustrated in Fig. 2 (b)
only symbol interleavers are considered, i.e., “interleavers that
because of its analogy to the user delay. Then, each pair of
take n0 output bits in a single trellis step as a symbol drawn
the common interleaver, which we call mother interleaver,
from GF(2n0 ) and do permutation at the symbol level” [2].
and the cyclic shift τk(c) can be regarded as a newly gen-
Similar to [1], there is a strict limitation on the symbol
erated interleaver. The choice of cyclic shifts is completely
interleaver’s block length N  = N/n0 , which must be a prime
independent of the presence of user delays, then it is not
number.
required to properly control user delays aiming at good user
“Power interleavers” proposed in [3] are generated from a
separation. The idea can be easily generalized by using D
common interleaver and are particularly relevant to this work. (c) (c)
cyclic shifts, τk,1 , . . . , τk,D , i.e., by cascading D pairs of the
Given a “master interleaver” Π (permutation matrix), K power
cyclic shift and the common mother interleaver as illustrated
interleavers are generated as Πk = Πk . A major drawback is
in Fig. 2 (c). In other words, each interleaver is derived by
1 k and n are the number of input bits and of output bits, respectively,
0 0
cyclically shifting and self-interleaving the common mother
at each trellis step. m is the constraint length. interleaver in D steps.
1396 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 56, NO. 9, SEPTEMBER 2008

0
10 0 Tarable N=1112
10
N=8000
(N=8006 for Tarable) random power
−1
−1
10 10 interleavers

random
−2
10 congruential
−2
10 single
user
BER

BER
−3
Tarable 10 bound
Brück
−3
10 Brück N=21104
random −4
congruent 10 power D=1 D=2
random interleavers
−4
10 D=2 cyclic
shifts
−5
10 random
interleavers D cyclic shifts
single user are randomly
−5
bound D=3 chosen
10 −6
10
0 2 4 6 8 0 2 4 6 8 10
Eb/N0 in dB Eb/N0 in dB

Fig. 3. BER performance of IDMA on an AWGN channel after 16 iterations Fig. 4. BER performance of IDMA on an AWGN channel after 14 iterations
for K = 2 users. for K = 6 users.

A set of cyclic shifts for K interleavers may be optimized
for a given scenario depending on a channel, user delays,
an FEC code, a block length, the number of users, and
so forth. However, we propose to choose them randomly.
No optimization effort is necessary if the performance is
sufficiently good when using randomly chosen cyclic shifts.
As we will see later, only a few randomly chosen cyclic shifts
are sufficient for good user separation. This is a desirable
feature since each interleaver is determined by only a few
cyclic shifts and there is no need to store a large sets of
interleavers where each of them may be optimized for a
particular scenario. Furthermore, each interleaver can be even
characterized by only a single parameter of a random seed,
from which a few cyclic shifts are easily generated.
V. S IMULATION R ESULTS
Simulation results in two different scenarios are presented to
compare the performance of IDMA systems using interleavers
generated from different schemes. In the first scenario, we
consider K = 2 users where information bits are encoded by a
rate Rc = 1/2 memory 2 standard convolutional code with the
generator polynomial [7, 5]8 . The trellis of the encoder is ter-
minated. No repetition code is applied. The BER performance
averaged over two users for the block size N = 8000 after
16 iterations is illustrated in Fig. 3. For comparison, we also
plot the single user bound as well as the performance using
completely randomly generated interleavers (a usual case in
literature). As explained in Section III, symbol level congru-
ential interleavers with certain constraint on the block size are
considered in [2]. The block size N  = 4003 (N = 8006) of
symbol interleavers is found by computer search. This value
is chosen to be close to the current target N = 8000. Then,
any integer 1 ≤ pk < N  can be chosen for congruential
interleavers in (1). Here, p1 = 1 and p2 = 113 (the first
user has no interleaving as it is the case in [2]) and sk = 0
for both users. The performance using these interleavers is
rather poor (labeled as “Tarable”). The performance using
the interleavers from [1] (labeled as “Brück”) is also poor.
The computer search according to the algorithm in [1] found
p1 = 1 and p2 = 13 (s1 = s2 = 0). Since both of
these two conventional interleavers in [1], [2] are congruential
interleavers, randomly chosen congruential interleavers are
also reasonable to be considered and are evaluated. All the
possible values for pk can be found that are relatively prime
to the block size N . Each user randomly picks one value
out of all the possible values of pk which is updated for
every transmission frame. Moreover, the starting index sk is
randomly chosen and updated in order to introduce further
randomness. No effort is made to ensure that pk and sk are
distinct for the two users. The high error floor can be observed
in Fig. 3. Now, we evaluate the performance of interleavers
based on our proposal. The UMTS turbo interleaver [6] is used
as the mother interleaver, just as an example2. D = 2 cyclic
shifts are randomly chosen and updated for every transmission.
There is no guarantee that the cyclic shifts are distinct for
users. We see that the performance is as good as using
completely randomly generated interleavers.
As the second scenario, we compare the performance of
K = 6 users where Nb = 128 information bits are encoded
by the rate Rc = 1/2 memory 4 standard convolutional
code ([31, 27]8, the trellis is terminated) followed by the rate
Rr = 1/4 repetition code. The resulting interleaver size is
N = 1056. The BER performance after 14 iterations is
averaged over all users and is plotted in Fig. 4. The block
size N  = 139 of symbol interleaver is found by the computer
search according to the algorithm in [2] (N = 1112 close to
our target N = 1056). Any integer 1 ≤ pk < 139 can be
chosen for congruential interleavers in (1), and here pk = k
2 UMTS turbo interleaver is defined for 40 ≤ N ≤ 5114. The definition
is extended such that the inter-row permutation pattern in [6] is chosen as
T (j) = P at1 for N > 5114, just to obtain a deterministic interleaver for
convenience.
KUSUME and BAUCH: SIMPLE CONSTRUCTION OF MULTIPLE INTERLEAVERS: CYCLICALLY SHIFTING A SINGLE INTERLEAVER
is chosen and sk = 0 for all users. It can be observed that
the performance using these interleavers, labeled “Tarable”,
shows the high error floor. We note that the algorithm does not
take advantage of the repetition code since no optimization is
provided in [2] for the case of a convolutional code followed
by a repetition code. For the given coding parameters, the
algorithm in [1] identifies the required minimum block size
that is 20800 in this example. In order to find interleavers
for 6 users, the block size must be even larger, and with
N = 21104 we found p1 = 1, p2 = 105, p3 = 525,
p4 = 2625, p5 = 8125, and p6 = 12979. The starting index
is set sk = 0 for all users. In spite of the required long
block size (roughly 20 times larger than the current target
block size), users cannot be separated (see the curve labeled
“Brück”). Using random congruential interleavers also results
in the high error floor. The performance of power interleavers
Πk = Πk with the UMTS turbo interleaver Π is almost as
good as that of random interleavers. With a random choice of
the exponent 1 ≤ mk ≤ 100 for Πk = Πmk , however, we
observe the high error floor (see the curve labeled as “random
power interleavers”). Note that no effort is made to avoid
interleaver collisions. Such random power interleavers may
be desired in a decentralized network or in a cellular network
where there is no cooperation among base stations regarding
the interleaver assignment. Increasing the maximum value of
mk can naturally reduce the collision probability, but larger
delays for generating interleavers result. Finally, we evaluate
the performance of interleavers based on our proposal. In
particular, we are interested in the impact of the number of
cyclic shifts on the performance. The BER performance is
plotted for 1, 2 and 3 randomly chosen cyclic shifts being used
together with the common UMTS turbo interleaver. Relatively
high error floors can be observed for one and two random
cyclic shifts. With three random cyclic shifts, no error floor
can be observed in error rates of practical interest.
1397
VI. C ONCLUSIONS
We proposed a simple method for generating multiple inter-
leavers which are derived from a common mother interleaver
with only a few randomly chosen cyclic shifts and self-
interleaving. Any interleaver may be used as the common
mother interleaver. It turned out that only a few randomly
generated cyclic shifts are sufficient for good user separation in
IDMA systems and no further optimization effort is necessary.
Although our focus was on the user separation in IDMA
systems, interleavers generated by the proposed scheme may
be applied in many other application areas such as multi-
dimensional concatenated codes.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors thank anonymous reviewers for their construc-
tive critics and suggestions, and also for pointing out the
reference [3] which has particular relevance to this work.
R EFERENCES
[1] S. Brück, U. Sorger, S. Gligorevic, and N. Stolte, “Interleaving for
outer convolutional codes in DS-CDMA systems,” IEEE Trans. Commun.,
vol. 48, no. 7, pp. 1100–1107, July 2000.
[2] A. Tarable, G. Montorsi, and S. Benedetto, “Analysis and design of
interleavers for iterative multiuser receivers in coded CDMA systems,”
IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 51, no. 5, pp. 1650–1666, May 2005.
[3] H. Wu, L. Ping, and A. Perotti, “User-specific chip-level interleaver
design for IDMA systems,” IEE Electron. Lett., vol. 42, no. 4, pp. 233–
234, Feb. 2006.
[4] L. Ping, L. Liu, K. Y. Wu, and W. K. Leung, “Interleave-division multiple-
access,” IEEE Trans. Wireless Commun., vol. 5, no. 4, pp. 938–947, Apr.
2006.
[5] K. Kusume and G. Bauch, “CDMA and IDMA: Iterative multiuser
detections for near-far asynchronous communications,” in Proc. IEEE
Int. Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications
(PIMRC 2005), Sept. 2005.
[6] 3G TS 25.212, “3rd generation partnership project; technical specification
group radio access network; multiplexing and channel coding (FDD)
(release 1999),” Mar. 2000.