Soft-Decision Decoding of Permutation Block Codes in AWGN and Rayleigh Fading Channels

We introduce an efficient soft-decision decoder for permutation block codes when assuming AWGN and slow fading frequency-nonselective channels. The decoder implements a combination of the Hungarian algorithm and Murty's algorithm for the kth assignment. Results show that the proposed algorithm achieves better coding gain when compared with hard-decision decoding. A salient feature of the decoder is that it operates within practical computational complexity, especially for large codebooks.