Irregular Vector Turbo Codes with Low Complexity

Abstract The term Block Turbo Code typically refers to the iterative decoding of a serially concatenated two-dimensional systematic block code. This paper introduces a Vector Turbo Code that is irregular but with code rates comparable to those of a Block Turbo Code (BTC) when the Bahl Cocke Jelinek Raviv (BCJR) algorithm is used. In Block Turbo Codes, the horizontal (or vertical) blocks are encoded first and the vertical (or horizontal) blocks second. The irregular Vector Turbo Code (iVTC) uses information bits that participate in varying numbers of trellis sections, which are organized into blocks that are encoded horizontally (or vertical) without vertical (or horizontal) encoding. The decoding requires only one soft-input soft-output (SISO) decoder. In general, a reduction in complexity, in comparison to a Block Turbo Code was achieved for the same very low probability of bit error (10−5 ). Performance in the AWGN channel shows that iVTC is capable of achieving a significant coding gain of 1.28 dB for a 64QAM modulation scheme, at a bit error rate (BER) of 10−5over its corresponding Block Turbo Code. Simulation results also show that some of these codes perform within 0.49 dB of capacity for binary transmission over an AWGN channel.