High coded data rate and multicodeword WiMAX LDPC decoding on Cell/BE

A novel, flexible and scalable parallel LDPC decoding approach for the WiMAX wireless broadband standard (IEEE 802.16e) in the multicore Cell broadband engine architecture is proposed. A multicodeword LDPC decoder performing the simultaneous decoding of 96 codewords is presented. The coded data rate achieved a range of 72-80-Mbit/s, which compares well with VLSI-based decoders and is superior to the maximum coded data rate required by the WiMAX standard performing in worst case conditions. The 8-bit precision arithmetic adopted shows additional advantages over traditional 6-bit precision dedicated VLSI-based solutions, allowing better error floors and BER performance.