Asymptotic distance properties of binary woven convolutional codes

Two constructions of binary concatenated convolutional codes are considered. In our previous work [Proc. 4th Int. Symp. Commun. Theory Appl., Lake District, UK (1997)] such codes were called woven convolutional codes. In the present paper, asymptotic lower bounds on active distances of woven convolutional codes are investigated. It is shown that these distances can be bounded from below by linearly growing functions with a strictly positive slope for all rates of concatenated codes, and the construction complexity of woven convolutional codes grows as an exponent of the memory of these codes.