Design of q-ary Irregular Repeat-Accumulate Codes

This paper is concerned with the construction of a class of nonbinary irregular repeat accumulate (IRA) codes. Since they are defined on the finite field GF(q) (q>2), we will refer to the constructed codes as q-ary IRA (QIRA) codes. While preserving the excellent error correcting capability of q-ary LDPC codes, QIRA codes can be efficiently encoded like conventional binary IRA codes. By adopting the progressive edge growth (PEG) algorithm to construct the parity check matrices, we can achieve the increased girth of their factor graphs and improved decoding performance. Simulation results show that, using the sum-product algorithm on GF(q), QIRA codes outperform binary LDPC codes and turbo codes in terms of bit error ratio and frame error ratio on AWGN channels. Especially, they could achieve excellent error performance when combined with high order modulations. Feasibility study indicates, with the use of the extended min-sum (EMS) decoding algorithm, QIRA codes are competitive candidates for practical applications.