Turbo like multi-stage threshold decoding for self-orthogonal convolutional codes

This paper presents a new dimension of soft decoding turbo-like multi-stage threshold decoding (TLMTD) for self-orthogonal convolutional codes (SOCCs). The TLMTD uses comparatively shorter constraint length conventional code of multi-stage threshold decoding (MTD) system. The bit error performance is considered for several types of soft decoding algorithms on the additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel. When threshold value used as a priori threshold value for other decoding stage, TLMTD realizes better performance in waterfall and error floor regions. Moreover, the TLMTD gives 0.20 dB more coding gain compared to MTD for equivalent SOCCs at the bit error rate less than 10^-4.