A Simple Scheme for Belief Propagation Decoding of BCH and RS Codes in Multimedia Transmissions

Abstract EN

Classic linear block codes, like Bose-Chaudhuri-Hocquenghem (BCH) and Reed-Solomon (RS) codes, are widely used in multimedia transmissions, but their soft-decision decoding still represents an open issue.

Among the several approaches proposed for this purpose, an important role is played by the iterative belief propagation principle, whose application to low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes permits to approach the channel capacity.

In this paper, we elaborate a new technique for decoding classic binary and nonbinary codes through the belief propagation algorithm.

We focus on RS codes included in the recent CDMA2000 standard, and compare the proposed technique with the adaptive belief propagation approach, that is able to ensure very good performance but with higher complexity.

Moreover, we consider the case of long BCH codes included in the DVB-S2 standard, for which we show that the usage of “pure” LDPC codes would provide better performance.