An Efficient Hybrid Decoder for Block Turbo Codes

In this letter, an efficient hybrid decoder for block turbo codes (BTCs) is proposed to improve the hybrid BTC decoder developed by Al-Dweik et al. A simple formula for estimating the extrinsic information is first derived. Then the proposed decoder is constructed by modifying the decoder of Al-Dweik et al. using the formula. Simulation results show that the proposed decoder can substantially reduce the complexity of the decoder of Al-Dweik et al., especially for moderate and high signal-to-noise ratios, with nearly the same bit error rate performance.