Sparse Vector Coding for Short-Packet Transmission on Industrial Communications: Reference Architecture and Design Challenges

Reliable, fast, and deterministic communications are fundamental for future industrial wireless systems. This goal requires multiple cooperating technologies that pertain to different areas of the communication arena. The weight of the waveform and coding technique choices are critical to match industrial use cases' reliability and latency requirements. Specifically, this article contributes to the field of channel coding in wireless fieldbus links. Classical block coding schemes were designed to maximize information bit rates without stringent latency requirements. Their performance in applications that use short messages degrades significantly. Recently, sparse vector coding (SVC) has been proposed as a coding approach suitable for short-packet communications with moderate complexity and low processing latency. This article presents a comprehensive analysis of SVC and a reference communication framework for its implementation on a wireless system. A set of simulations is also designed to establish the cross correlation between the different parameters involved in the code design. As a result, the coding matrix has been identified as a critical parameter that can improve coding performance. In addition, this article includes two new procedures for determining the matrix that could lead to a gain of up to 2 dB with respect to the current state of the art.