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Research Letter
Simplified LLRs for the Decoding of Single Parity Check Turbo
Product Codes Transmitted Using 16QAM
School of Information Technology and Engineering (SITE), University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1N 6N5
Iterative soft-decision decoding algorithms require channel log-likelihood ratios (LLRs) which, when using 16QAM modula-
tion, require intensive computations to be obtained. Therefore, we derive four simple approximate LLR expressions. When using
the maximum a posteriori probability algorithm for decoding single parity check turbo product codes (SPC/TPCs), these LLRs
can be simplified even further. We show through computer simulations that the bit-error-rate performance of (8, 7)2 and (8, 7)3
SPC/TPCs, transmitted using 16QAM and decoded using the maximum a posteriori algorithm with our simplified LLRs, is nearly
identical to the one achieved by using the exact LLRs.
Copyright © 2007 Maher Arar et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License,
which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
The above equation tells us that in coded systems, we can where s1,u = s1I,u + js1Q,u and s0,u = s0I,u + js0Q,u are the
extract additional information, called extrinsic information, 16QAM symbols where bit u ∈ {a, b, c, d} is equal to 1 and
that we can use to improve the reliability of the soft decision, 0, respectively.
that is,
3. SIMPLE APPROXIMATED EXPRESSIONS FOR CHAN-
L(x) = Lc (y) + La (x) + Lext (y). (5)
NEL LLRs
Equations (2), (4), and (5) form the core of the MAP al-
One way of simplifying (6) is to only retain the largest value
gorithm [3] used to decode SPC/TPC. It can be easily shown
in the numerator and the denominator, in other words, to
that Lc (αy) = αLc (y) and Lext (αy) = αLext (y) for any pos-
retain only the value that has the smallest Euclidian distance.
itive constant α. In this case, and for equiprobable symbols,
That is, given the channel observation y, we find the closest
L(x) will be scaled by a positive integer α and hence the sign
neighbor, where bit u = 1, and the closest neighbor, where
will not be affected. Therefore, L(x) can be normalized by α.
bit u = 0, to compute the following approximated LLR:
This fact will be exploited to simplify the expressions for the
16QAM LLRs. e−| y−
s1,u | /σ n
2 2
2 2
= 2
s0,u − y −
s1,u (7b)
σn
Square 16QAM modulation is a bandwidth-efficient modu- yI yQ
lation technique. Each 16QAM symbol represents 4 bits giv- =2 2
s1I,u −
s0I,u + 2 2
s1Q,u −
s0Q,u
ing a raw bandwidth efficiency of 4 bits/s/Hz. σn σn
12 1 (7c)
One way of minimizing the overall bit error rate in dig- + 2
s0I,u −
s1I,u + 2
s20Q,u −
s21Q,u ,
2
ital communication systems is by using the Gray mapping, σn σn
Maher Arar et al. 3
where
s1,u and
s0,u are the closest (in Euclidean distance) 100
16QAM symbols to y, where bit u is equal to 1 and 0, re-
spectively.
10−1
Equation (7c) can be further simplified in different ways
depending on the bit in question (i.e., bit a, b, c, or d shown
in Figure 1). We clearly see from Figure 1 that for bits a and b 10−2
we have s1I,u = s0I,u , and consequently the expression in (7c)
BER
is simplified to
10−3
yQ 1
L(a) =2 s1Q,a − s0Q,a + 2 s20Q,a − s21Q,a (8)
σ 2n σn 10−4
yQ 1 0 2 4 6 8 10
L(b) =2 s1Q,b − s0Q,b + 2 s20Q,b − s21Q,b (9)
σ 2n σn SNR per bit (dB)
L(a) = yQ − 2 . (10)
σ 2n
(i.e., −2 ≤ yI ≤ + 2 and −2 ≤ yQ ≤ + 2 ). We here choose
For bit b, we have s1Q,b = 1 and s0Q,b = −1 when the latter method to obtain
−2 ≤ yQ ≤ + 2, s1Q,b = 1, and s0Q,b = −3 when yQ < −2
4
and s1Q,b = 3 and s0Q,b = −1 when yQ > 2. Therefore, (9) can L(b) ≈ yQ ,
σ 2n
be rewritten as follows: (14)
4
⎧ L(d) ≈ 2 yI ,
⎪
⎪ 4 σn
⎪
⎪ y ,
2 Q
if − 2 ≤ yQ ≤ + 2,
⎪
⎪ σ
⎪
⎪ n
⎪
⎨ 8 respectively.
L(b) = yQ + 1 , yQ < −2, (11) As mentioned in Section 2.2, the MAP algorithm for de-
⎪⎪ σ 2n
⎪
⎪ coding SPC/TPC is insensitive to the same positive scaling
⎪
⎪
⎪
⎪
⎪
8 factor. Therefore, (10), (12), and (14) can be simplified to
⎩ 2 yQ − 1 , yQ > +2.
σn yield very simple expressions for the channel LLRs:
Using similar analysis, we can find approximate expressions
L(a) = yQ − 2,
for L(c) as
L(b) = yQ ,
(15)
4
L(c) = yI − 2,
L(c) = 2 yI − 2 (12)
σn
L(d) = yI .
and for L(d) as
4. SIMULATION RESULTS
Figure 2 compares the BER performance of two SPC/TPCs
using the exact LLR expression in (6) for finding the chan-
nel soft information to that decoded using the approximate
LLR expressions in (15). In both cases, we clearly see that
the performance is nearly identical. It should be emphasized
that the performance achieved using the proposed method
for calculating the channel LLRs costs only a tiny fraction of
the computational effort required to achieve the same per-
formance using the exact LLR expression. Furthermore, the
proposed simplified LLRs do not require knowledge of noise
variance.
5. CONCLUSION
In this letter, we introduced simple LLRs for 16QAM mod-
ulation for use with SISO decoding of SPC/TPC. Simplified
LLRs for general M-QAM modulation schemes can be eas-
ily derived using similar analysis to the one presented in this
letter.
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