Fast convergence of joint demodulation and decoding based on joint sparse graph for spatially coupling data transmission

Spatially coupling data transmission (SCDT) is a multiple access technique. Since both SCDT and low density parity-check (LDPC) codes can be represented by a factor graph, a joint sparse graph (JSG) including the single graphs of SCDT and LDPC codes is constructed. Based on the JSG, the joint demodulation and decoding (JDD) by applying belief propagation (BP) algorithm in the parallel schedule is performed, but its convergence rate is slow. In order to accelerate convergence rate, a new serial schedule is proposed. The extrinsic information transfer (EXIT) charts of iterative JDD are investigated for the two schedules and employed to evaluate their converge behaviour. EXIT analysis and simulation results demonstrate that about half iteration number can be saved at the cost of marginal system performance loss. Furthermore, compared with separate demodulation and decoding, turbo-structured JDD and the uncoupling structured JDD, the JDD based on JSG for SCDT by utilizing serial schedule achieves the best performance.