T. Koumoto et al., A low-weight trellis-based iterative soft-decision decoding algorithm for binary linear block codes, IEEE INFO T, 45(2), 1999, pp. 731-741
This paper presents a new low-weight trellis-based soft-decision iterative
decoding algorithm for binary linear block codes. The algorithm is devised
based on a set of optimality conditions and the generation of a sequence of
candidate codewords for an optimality test. The initial candidate codeword
is generated by a simple decoding method. The subsequent candidate codewor
ds, if needed, are generated by a chain of low-weight trellis searches, one
at a time. Each search is conducted through a low-weight trellis diagram c
entered around the latest candidate codeword and results in an improvement
over the previous candidate codewords that have been already tested. This i
mprovement is then used as the next candidate codeword for a test of optima
lity. The decoding iteration stops whenever a candidate codeword is found t
o satisfy a sufficient condition on optimality or the latest low-weight tre
llis search results in a repetition of a previously generated candidate cod
eword. A divide-and-conquer technique is also presented for codes that are
not spanned by their minimum-weight codewords. The proposed decoding algori
thm has been applied to some well-known codes of lengths 48, 64, and 128. S
imulation results show that the proposed algorithm achieves either practica
lly optimal error performance for the example codes of length 48 and 64 or
near optimal error performance for the (128, 29, 32) RM code with a signifi
cant reduction in computational decoding complexity.