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CDM-625A Advanced Satellite Modem
Appendix M
Most importantly, however, LDPC codes can now be designed that yield almost
equivalent coding gain, but with considerably shorter block lengths.
•
In an ACM mode, no overhead channel was defined by DVB-S2 for the purpose of
reporting SNR metrics to the originating end. It has been left to individual equipment
manufacturers to decide their own method. This illustrates that all ACM systems,
DVB-S2 or not, are proprietary. In addition, it implies that additional bandwidth needs to
be consumed for the SNR reporting, and this is not accounted for in the code rate.
M.6
VersaFEC ACM
VersaFEC (a registered trademark of Comtech AHA), in concert with a novel ACM approach,
addresses all of the shortcomings of DVB-S2 outlined above.
VersaFEC covers a family of 12 short-block LDPC ModCods, specifically designed for low latency
and ACM applications. However, the VersaFEC codes are equally well suited to Constant Coding
and Modulation (CCM) applications.
The requirements for an ACM system that approaches the minimum possible latency are:
•
The shortest possible LDPC codes that give performance at or very close to DVB-S2, in
order to minimize latency, and which do not use interleaving.
•
Design of the encoder to further reduce latency to the minimum possible.
•
A constant number of symbols per block, to reduce the demodulator and decoder
complexity, and significantly, also reduces latency in the ACM case.
•
The elimination of the need for pilot symbols for carrier tracking at low SNR by
substitution of other modulation techniques. This further reduces the complexity of the
demodulator.
•
Reduction in the number of ModCods to further reduce complexity.
•
The inclusion, at the physical layer, of an overhead channel to permit the reporting of
SNR metrics back to the originating end. Note that this does not have to be enabled or
disabled – it is part of the fundamental frame structure of VersaFEC ACM, and has been
take into account in the code rate.
The family of VersaFEC short-block LDPC codes is presented in Error! Reference source not
found.. The modulation types include BPSK, QPSK, 8-QAM and 16-QAM. It will be seen from the
table that in order to maintain a constant number of symbols per block, the block size in bits
(data + parity) must necessarily change, depending on both the modulation type (which affects
the number of bits per symbol) and the code rate. For VersaFEC, the block size varies between
2k and 8.2k bits. At worst, therefore, the VersaFEC codes are 50% shorter than the 'short' DVB-
S2 codes.
M–6
Revision 0
MN-CDM625A
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