Design and Decoding of a Serial Concatenated Code Structure based on Quasi-Cyclic LDPC Codes

In this paper, we introduce a new serially concatenated code structure, based on Quasi-Cyclic (QC) codes. This structure can be viewed as LDPC codes, and benefits from the advantages of structured QC LDPC codes: simple characterization, good performance for moderate code length and efficient implementation. These codes enable different types of decoding algorithms, from classical Belief Propagation to Turbo-Like decoding algorithms. A joint analysis, in terms of complexity, convergence and performance, has been performed to determine the best decoding choice.