Application of LT Code with BCH Precode for Wireless Body Area Network

Wireless body area network (WBAN) is a key component in telehealth system. The reliability of data transmission is of utmost importance in a WBAN system, as a loss of transmitted data or erroneous data at the receiver may lead to diagnosis errors or delayed treatment. As WBAN typically has limited data processing capability and limited energy, the coding schemes for WBAN transmission must be low in complexity. In this research, we propose the use of Luby Transform (LT) code, known for its simplicity and capability to recover data transmitted in erasure channels, combined with Bose–Chaudhuri–Hocquenghem (BCH) as a precode. BCH precode is used to ensure the recovery and correction of the transmitted symbols which are not recovered by the LT code. Simulations are done to compare the BER versus Eb/No performance of standalone BCH code with LT code equipped with BCH precode, as well as the performance of LT codes with various BCH precodes. It is shown that LT with BCH precode outperforms standalone BCH code. It is also shown that BCH with higher error correction capability namely BCH (63,36,11) and (127,64,21) when combined with LT code will outperform LT codes with BCH (15,7,3) and (31,21,5) precodes.