A hybrid iterative decoder for LDPC codes

A hybrid decoder (HD) for LDPC codes in the presence of additive white Gaussian noise is proposed. This HD employs a min-sum belief propagation (BP) decoding to correct errors, combined with erasure iterative decoding. Whenever BP decoding fails, its output is modified and artificially created erasures are introduced. The proposed HD employs an overall reduced number of iterations and achieves a similar performance to that of traditional BP decoding schemes, especially in the error-floor region, with equivalent implementation complexity. Results of HD performance obtained by computer simulation are presented.