FPGA Implementations of LDPC over GF(2^m) Decoders

Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) codes over GF(2^m) are an extension of binary LDPC codes that have not been studied extensively. Performances of GF(2^m) LDPC codes have been shown to be higher than binary LDPC codes, but the complexity of the encoders/decoders increases. Hence there iS a substantial lack of hardware implementations for LDPC over GF(2^m) codes. This paper presents a FPGA serial implementation of two decoding algorithms for LDPC over GF(2^m). The results prove that the implementation of LDPC over GF(2^m) decoding is feasible and the extra complexity of the decoder is balanced by the superior performance of GF(2^m) LDPC codes.