Low-complexity high-speed soft-hard decoding for turbo-product codes

Abstract

Combined (soft-hard) method for decoding block turbo-product codes is proposed in the paper. The method allows leveraging advantages of soft input data usage with the speed of hard-decoding procedure. The main peculiarity of the method is rule-based decoding stage. The proposed approach simplifies calculation procedure and reaches better correction ability than hard-decision decoder. Mathematical model of investigated method has been tested with the set of codes based on product of extended Hamming codes. Testing has confirmed correctness of the combined decoding method.