Upper bounds on the bit error probability and repeat request probability, and lower bounds on the throughput are derived for a Hybrid-ARQ scheme that employs trellis-coded modulation on a fading dispersive channel. The receiver employs a modified Viterbi algorithm to perform joint maximum likelihood sequence estimation (MLSE) equalization and decoding. Retransmissions are generated by using the approach suggested by Yamamoto and Itoh. The analytical bounds are extended to trellis-coded modulation on fading dispersive channels with code combining. Comparison of the analytical bounds with simulation results shows that the analytical bounds are quite loose when diversity reception is not employed. However, no other analytical bounds exist in the literature for the trellis-coded Hybrid ARQ system studied in this paper. Therefore, the results presented in this paper can provide the basis for comparison with more sophisticated analytical bounds that may be derived in the future.

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) has been receiving a lot of attention in the field of broadcasting because of its ruggedness under multipath environments. One of important issues to realize high quality reception of OFDM signals is to correct frequency and timing offsets between the transmitter and receiver so that orthogonality of the carriers can be maintained. This paper discusses a frequency and timing period acquisition technique for OFDM systems. A new offset estimation technique is introduced that detects both the frequency and timing peirod offsets at the same time by using only one pilot symbol with its suitable frequency assignment. A pseudo noise (PN) sequence is also introduced to assign these frequencies of the pilot symbol so that the frequency acquisition range can be widened. Numerical examples are given to show the estimate variances of the proposed frequency and timing period estimator over both additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and multipath fading channels. Also the bit error rate (BER) performance for an open loop acquisition system is examined.

A new upper hound on the error probability for maximum likelihood sequence estimation of digital signaling on intersymbol interference channels with additive white Gaussian noise is presented. The basic idea is to exclude all parallel error sequences and to exclude some of the overlapping error events from the union bound. It is shown that the new upper bound can be easily and efficiently computed by using a properly labeled error-state diagram and a one-directional stack algorithm. Several examples are presented that compare the new upper bound with bounds previously reported in the literature.