Hardware Implementation of (63, 51) BCH Encoder and Decoder For WBAN Using LFSR and BMA

Error Correcting Codes are required to have a reliable communication through a medium that has an unacceptable bit error rate and low signal to noise ratio. In IEEE 802.15.6 2.4GHz Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN), data gets corrupted during the transmission and reception due to noises and interferences. Ultra low power operation is crucial to prolong the life of implantable devices. Hence simple block codes like BCH (63, 51, 2) can be employed in the transceiver design of 802.15.6 Narrowband PHY. In this paper, implementation of BCH (63, 51, t = 2) Encoder and Decoder using VHDL is discussed. The incoming 51 bits are encoded into 63 bit code word using (63, 51) BCH encoder. It can detect and correct up to 2 random errors. The design of an encoder is implemented using Linear Feed Back Shift Register (LFSR) for polynomial division and the decoder design is based on syndrome calculator, inversion-less Berlekamp-Massey algorithm (BMA) and Chien search algorithm. Synthesis and simulation were carried out using Xilinx ISE 14.2 and ModelSim 10.1c. The codes are implemented over Virtex 4 FPGA device and tested on DN8000K10PCIE Logic Emulation Board. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first time an implementation of (63, 51) BCH encoder and decoder carried out.