Flexible channel coding approach for short-length codewords

This letter introduces a channel coding design framework for short-length codewords which can achieve lower error floor than previous approaches. The proposed code is based on combining convolutional coding with a q-ary linear combination and unequal energy allocation. Simulation results suggest that for very low Bit Error Rates (BER) the proposed system will exhibit lower error floors than previous approaches, with a small performance penalty at mid-range BERs. On the other hand, when selecting an error floor higher than the previous approaches, the loss in performance at mid-range BERs is negligible.