Generalized parallel concatenated block codes based on BCH and RS codes, construction and Iterative decoding

In this paper, a generalization of parallel concatenated block (GPCB) codes based on BCH and RS codes is presented. On the sender side two systematic encoders are used and separated by an interleaver. In the receiver side, the Chase-Pyndiah algorithm is utilized as component decoder in an iterative process. The effect of various component codes, interleaver sizes and patterns, and the number of iterations are investigated using simulations. The simulation results show that the slope of curves and coding gain are improved by increasing the number of iterations and/or the interleaver size. From the simulations we observe that the performance GPCB based on RS become worse when increasing the length of the component codes. This is differing with the knowledge that increasing the codes’ length leads to better performance.The comparison between GPCB based on BCH only, RS only or BCH and RS codes shows that the performance of the GPCB based on BCH codes are the best and the ones based on BCH and RS codes fall in between the two other GPCB codes.