Comments on Soft decision metric generation for QAM with channel estimation error

Abstract

A log-max generalized bit log-likelihood ratio (GLLR) was derived in an earlier work of Wang et al. for soft decision decoding of quadrature amplitude modulation that takes into account channel estimation error. The results in the above paper show that the GLLR metric outperforms the conventional LLR metric that does not account for channel estimation error. In trying to reproduce the results of the above paper, our simulations indicate that their results were obtained without proper scaling of the transmit constellation. Conversely, through simulations, we demonstrate that by properly scaling the constellation to have unity average energy, the GLLR metric does not result in a noticeable advantage in the bit error rate over the conventional LLR metric for practically meaningful values of the channel estimation error. © 2014 IEEE.