Convolutional codes for iterative decoding

This paper gives an overview of three different classes of convolutional codes that are suitable for iterative decoding. They are characterized by the type of component codes that are used to construct the overall codes, which can be trivial parity-check constraints, block component codes, or convolutional component codes. Distance properties and iterative decoding performance are considered. All three classes of codes are asymptotically good, allow simple encoding, and can be decoded efficiently using iterative pipeline decoding architectures.