Decoding performance of binary and non-binary LDPC codes for IEEE 802.11n standard

LDPC codes, a kind of error correcting codes, performs near Shannon limit and are recommended for many practical applications. Non-binary LDPC codes excels binary LDPC in error correcting property especially for short and moderate block length. Construction of parity check matrix for IEEE 802.11n standard non-binary LDPC code has been done here. Comparison of binary LDPC and non-binary LDPC codes for IEEE 802.11n standard based on their decoding performance for probability domain and log domain decoding algorithms which has not been made so far is done in this paper. Decoding performance measured in terms of bit error rate and frame error rate shows that the non-binary codes outperforms binary codes for 802.11n LDPC with increasing order of Galois field.