Short block length code design for interference channels

We focus on short block length code design for Gaussian interference channels (GICs) using trellis-based codes. We employ two different decoding techniques at the receiver side, namely, joint maximum likelihood (JML) decoding and single user (SU) minimum distance decoding. For different interference levels (strong and weak) and decoding strategies, we derive error-rate bounds to evaluate the code performance. We utilize the derived bounds in code design and provide several numerical examples for both strong and weak interference cases. We show that under the JML decoding, the newly designed codes offer significant improvements over the alternatives of optimal point-to-point (P2P) trellis-based codes and off-the-shelf low density parity check (LDPC) codes with the same block lengths.