Simplified Trellis Min–Max Decoder Architecture for Nonbinary Low-Density Parity-Check Codes

Nonbinary low-density parity-check (NB-LDPC) codes have become an efficient alternative to their binary counterparts in different scenarios, such as moderate codeword lengths, high-order modulations, and burst error correction. Unfortunately, the complexity of NB-LDPC decoders is still too high for practical applications, especially for the check node (CN) processing, which limits the maximum achievable throughput. Although a great effort has been made in the recent literature to overcome this disadvantage, the proposed decoders are still not ready for high-speed implementations for high-order fields. In this paper, a simplified trellis min-max algorithm is proposed, where the CN messages are computed in a parallel way using only the most reliable information. The proposed CN algorithm is implemented using a horizontal layered schedule. The overall decoder architecture has been implemented in a 90-nm CMOS process for a (N = 837 and K = 726) NB-LDPC code over GF(32), achieving a throughput of 660 Mb/s at nine iterations based on postlayout results. This decoder increases hardware efficiency compared with the existing recent solutions for the same code.