International Conference on Software, Telecommunications and Computer Networks (SoftCOM)
Iterative soft-decision decoding of binary cyclic codes based on spread parity-check matrices
Marco Baldi, Giovanni Cancellieri, Franco Chiaraluce
Abstract
Binary cyclic codes achieve good error correction performance and allow the implementation of very simple encoder and decoder circuits. Among them, BCH codes represent a very important class of t-error correcting codes, with known structural properties and error correction capability. Decoding of binary cyclic codes is often accomplished through hard-decision decoders, although it is recognized that soft-decision decoding algorithms can produce significant coding gain with respect to hard-decision techniques. Several approaches have been proposed to implement iterative soft-decision decoding of binary cyclic codes. We study the technique based on "Extended Parity-Check Matrices", and show that such method is not suitable for high rates or long codes. We propose a new method, based on "Spread Parity-Check Matrices", that has the same complexity, but can achieve better correction performance in many practical cases.