Bounds for Joint Detection and Decoding on the Binary-Input AWGN Channel

Abstract: For asynchronous transmission of short blocks, preambles for packet detection contribute a non-negligible overhead. To reduce the required preamble length, joint detection and decoding (JDD) techniques have been proposed that additionally utilize the payload part of the packet for detection. In this paper, we analyze two instances of JDD, namely hybrid preamble and energy detection (HyPED) and decoder-aided detection (DAD). While HyPED combines the preamble with energy detection for the payload, DAD also uses the output of a channel decoder. For these systems, we propose novel achievability and converse bounds for the rates over the binary-input additive white Gaussian noise (BI-AWGN) channel. Moreover, we derive a general bound on the required blocklength for JDD. Both the theoretical bound and the simulation of practical codebooks show that the rate of DAD quickly approaches that of synchronous transmission.