A Log-Domain Approximation of SOCS Decoding for Turbo Product Codes

TL;DR

This paper introduces a log-domain approximation of SOCS decoding for turbo product codes, reducing complexity while maintaining high decoding performance, suitable for hardware implementation.

Contribution

It proposes a max-log based log-domain approximation of SOCS decoding, improving hardware efficiency without sacrificing decoding quality.

Findings

The proposed decoder outperforms Chase-Pyndiah with the same list size.

It approaches the performance of the full SOCS decoder.

Numerical results confirm improved extrinsic information quality.

Abstract

This paper studies low-complexity soft-output decoding of turbo product codes with extended Bose--Chaudhuri--Hocquenghem component codes. Recent soft-output from covered space (SOCS) decoding substantially improves the quality of extrinsic information compared with the conventional Chase--Pyndiah decoder, but its probabilistic-domain implementation is less attractive for hardware-oriented realizations. We therefore propose a log-domain approximation of SOCS based on max-log approach. The proposed soft-input soft-output rule replaces probability-domain operations with a piecewise-linear function of reliability gaps between competing Chase-II decoding list and out of the list hypotheses, which preserves compatibility with the standard iterative TPC decoding loop. Numerical results for a TPC built from (256,239) eBCH component codes show that the proposed decoder clearly outperforms the baseline Chase--Pyndiah decoder with the same list size and approaches the performance of SOCS decoder.