On Multilevel Coding Schemes Based on Non-Binary LDPC Codes

TL;DR

This paper proposes multilevel coding schemes based on non-binary LDPC codes over smaller fields to reduce decoding complexity for high-order modulation channels, achieving similar performance to larger field codes.

Contribution

It introduces NB-LDPC-MLC schemes that lower decoding complexity while maintaining performance comparable to larger field non-binary LDPC codes.

Findings

NB-LDPC-MLC schemes over GF(16) match the performance of codes over GF(64) and GF(256).

The schemes significantly reduce decoding complexity.

Simulation results confirm comparable performance to larger field codes.

Abstract

We address the problem of constructing of coding schemes for the channels with high-order modulations. It is known, that non-binary LDPC codes are especially good for such channels and significantly outperform their binary counterparts. Unfortunately, their decoding complexity is still large. In order to reduce the decoding complexity we consider multilevel coding schemes based on non-binary LDPC codes (NB-LDPC-MLC schemes) over smaller fields. The use of such schemes gives us a reasonable gain in complexity. At the same time the performance of NB-LDPC-MLC schemes is practically the same as the performance of LDPC codes over the field matching the modulation order. In particular by means of simulations we showed that the performance of NB-LDPC-MLC schemes over GF(16) is the same as the performance of non-binary LDPC codes over GF(64) and GF(256) in AWGN channel with QAM64 and QAM256 accordingly. We also perform a comparison with binary LDPC codes.