EXIT charts for non-binary LDPC codes

In this paper extrinsic information transfer (EXIT) charts are proposed to design non-binary low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes for the AWGN channel. A new metric is presented to describe the mutual information of the non-binary messages. The a priori information is modelled using a Gaussian mixture distribution. Analytical expressions are given for the EXIT curves of the variable and check node decoders for both regular and irregular LDPC codes. The analytical expressions are shown to agree well with simulation results. Finally, by matching the variable and check node EXIT curves, it is shown that good nonbinary LDPC can be designed for the AWGN channel.