Transactions Papers - Constructions of Nonbinary Quasi-Cyclic LDPC Codes: A Finite Field Approach

This paper is concerned with construction of efficiently encodable nonbinary quasi-cyclic LDPC codes based on finite fields. Four classes of nonbinary quasi-cyclic LDPC codes are constructed. Experimental results show that codes constructed perform well with iterative decoding using a fast Fourier transform based q-ary sum-product algorithm and they achieve significant coding gains over Reed-Solomon codes of the same lengths and rates decoded with either algebraic hard- decision Berlekamp-Massey algorithm or algebraic soft-decision Kotter-Vardy algorithm.