Iterated soft-decision decoding of block codes

摘要

Systems and methods for augmenting the performance of iterative soft decision-in soft decision-out decoding of block codes with extrinsic information based on multiple parity equations inherent to the block codes. Cyclic shifting of codewords may be applied in the context of iterative soft decision-in soft decision-out decoding to maximize the usefulness of a parity equation corresponding to any particular codeword bit. Soft decisions are determined on a bit-by-bit basis in response to multi-bit symbol measurements. This allows the use of relatively inexpensive bit-based decoders for decoding of multi-bit symbols.