Braided Convolutional Codes With Sliding Window Decoding

In this paper, we present a novel sliding window decoding scheme based on iterative Bahl-Cocke-Jelinek-Raviv decoding for braided convolutional codes, a class of turbo-like codes with short constraint length component convolutional codes. The tradeoff between performance and decoding latency is examined and, to reduce decoding complexity, both uniform and nonuniform message passing schedules within the decoding window, along with early stopping rules, are proposed. We also perform a density evolution analysis of sliding window decoding to guide the selection of the window size and message passing schedule. Periodic puncturing is employed to obtain rate-compatible code rates of 1/2 and 2/3 starting from a rate 1/3 mother code and a code rate of 3/4 starting from a rate 1/2 mother code. Simulation results show that, with nonuniform message passing and periodic puncturing, near capacity performance can be maintained throughout a wide range of rates with reasonable decoding complexity and no visible error floors.