A 2-SYMBOL BRANCH MULTIPLE BLOCK CODED MODULATION SCHEME/

By establishing a corresponding trellis diagram, it is possible to con struct block coded modulation (BCM) schemes that can be decoded using a Viterbi algorithm. Based on such BCM schemes, we propose a two-symbo l/branch multiple BCM (MBCM) scheme in this paper. Compared with the B CM scheme studied earlier by the authors, this new scheme increases th e minimum squared Euclidean distance (MSED), the minimum symbol distan ce (MSD), and the minimum product distance (MPD) by slightly compromis ing throughput on bandwidth efficiency. These three distances dominate the bit error rate (BER) under additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) o r fading channels. Computer simulation is done to confirm the reductio n in BER. (C) 1998 Scripta Technica.