Finite alphabet iterative decoders for LDPC codes surpassing floating-point iterative decoders

Introduced is a new type of message-passing (MP) decoders for low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes over the binary symmetric channel. Unlike traditional belief propagation (BP) based MP algorithms which propagate probabilities or log-likelihoods, the new MP decoders propagate messages requiring only a finite number of bits for their representation in such a way that good performance in the error floor region is ensured. Additionally, these messages are not quantised probabilities or log-likelihoods. As examples, MP decoders are provided that require only three bits for message representation, but surpass the floating-point BP (which requires a large number of bits for representation) in the error-floor region.