Bit-interleaved coded modulation (BICM) is nowadays the most popular coded modulation (CM) scheme for fading and non-fading channels. BICM has been adopted in commercial systems such as wireless and wired broadband access networks, 3G and 4G telephony, ultrawideband transceivers, and digital video broadcasting, imposing itself as the de facto standard for current wireless telecommunications systems. Moreover, BICM will be the basis for future communication standards, and therefore, its understanding becomes crucial.

At first glance, BICM appears to be a very simple "out-of-the-box" CM scheme. However, a careful analysis reveals intriguing properties and shows many optimization opportunities. In this tutorial, we will provide a simple and comprehensive overview of BICM, and we will lead the audience through the concepts underlying BICM systems. We will explain BICM principles, compare it to the competing CM schemes (i.e., trellis-coded and multilevel coded modulation), and also explain why BICM became a de facto standard in wireless industry.

This half-day (3 hours) tutorial is divided in seven parts which are-to a great extent- self-contained. This allows the participants to focus on the elements that are the most relevant to their particular interests and activities. To facilitate the understanding of the underlying concepts, the tutorial includes simple examples and case-studies.

We start by presenting information-theoretic aspects of BICM transmission and analyzing its optimization parameters. Next, we will discuss the analytical tools that can be used to efficiently analyze and design BICM transceivers. BICM with iterative decoding will be further shown and presented. We will conclude by showing how the performance of BICM can be improved if the interleaver and the code are properly (jointly) designed.

Alex Alvarado is currently a Newton International Fellow at the University of Cambridge, UK. He received his diploma in Electronics Engineering and his MSc degree from Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María, Valparaíso, Chile, in 2003 and 2005 respectively. He obtained the degree of Licentiate of Engineering (Teknologie Licentiatexamen) in 2008 and his PhD degree in 2011, both of them from Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden. //Since 2006, he has been involved in a research collaboration with INRS on the analysis and design of BICM systems. In 2008, he was holder of the Merit Scholarship Program for Foreign Students, granted by the Ministère de l'éducation, du Loisir et du Sports du Québec. Recognitions for his research work include an invited paper about the information theoretic aspects of BICM and a best poster award distinction at the 2009 IEEE Information Theory Workshop. His research interests are in the areas of digital communications, coding, and information theory.

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