Efficient stopping criterion for iterative decoding of turbo codes

A simple and efficient stopping criterion for iterative turbo decoding is proposed, focusing on not only reducing the average number of iterations but also minimising performance degradation due to early stopping. A measure and two decision thresholds are introduced to enhance performance and simplify the stopping criterion. Simulation results show that the proposed method provides performance very close to that of a decoder with optimum stopping criterion and reduces average number of decoding iterations.