EXIT chart analysis of nonbinary protograph LDPC codes for partial response channels

Abstract

Low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes over finite fields GF(q) provide an error correction in the noisy partial response (PR) channels. The extrinsic information transfer (EXIT) chart can be used to predict the threshold decoding of protograph LDPC codes, however, previous works only consider the binary protograph LDPC codes in the PR channels. In this paper, we propose to perform the EXIT chart analysis on the nonbinary protograph LDPC codes for the PR channels. Unlike prior works, the actual extrinsic information of the channel detector is measured, then the extrinsic information to the variable nodes is generated with the measured statistics. Moreover, since the mutual information of the variable nodes depends on GF(q), we use the Monte Carlo method to approximate the mutual information. The analysis on the regular (2,4) code, regular (3,6) code, RA code, and AR3A code on the PR channels reveal that, for the PR1 channel, the RA code outperforms the others for q = 2, 4, and 8, but the regular (2,4) code is the best for q = 16 and 32. For the PR2 channel, the RA code is the best code for q = 2 and 4, but the regular (2,4) code is the best code for q > 4. The simulation of the codes for q = 4 and 16 are then used to confirm the theoretical results.