Efficient iterative decoding algorithms for turbo and low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes
Stylianos Papaharalabos · Surrey Research Insight Open Access (The University of Surrey) · 2005
TUrbo and Low-Density Parity-Check (LDPC) codes are among the two most significant advances in channel coding over the recent years. Their astonishing bit error rate (BER) performance compared to moderate decoding complexity has enabled coding theorists to design practical codecs that can perform within a few tenths of a decibel to the channel capacity limit, exactly as Shannon had predicted more than fifty years ago. This research work has been motivated by the recent application of turbo and LDPC codes in many satellite standardisation committees, such as ETSI (S-UMTS, DVB-RCS/S2) and NASA (CCSDS), and also in some practical satellite systems, such as INMARSAT (BGAN) and EUTELSAT (Skyplex). The use of this kind of capacity-approaching codes is crucial to the power savings of the satellite, which in this case benefits by increasing, for example, the overall system capacity and area of coverage. In this thesis, we focus our attention on the decoder design. This is because, although the encoder is specified by the existing standards and systems, decoding algorithms are left open to the receiver designer. Efficient iterative decoding algorithms are pro-posed that can be applied to the general case of turbo and LDPC codes. It is shown