Short-blocklength non-binary LDPC codes with feedback-dependent incremental transmissions

One advantage of feedback in a point-to-point memoryless channel is the reduction of the average blocklength required to approach capacity. This paper presents a communication system with feedback that uses carefully designed non-binary LDPC (NB-LDPC) codes and incremental transmissions to achieve 92-94% of the idealized throughput of rate-compatible sphere-packing with maximum-likelihood decoding (RCSP-ML) for average blocklengths of 150-450 bits. The system uses active feedback by carefully selecting each bit of additional incremental information to improve the reliability of the least reliable variable node. The system uses post processing in the decoder to further improve performance. The average blocklengths of 150-450 bits are small enough that feedback provides a throughput advantage but also large enough that overhead that might be associated with transmitter confirmation is more easily tolerated.