New low-density-parity-check decoding approach based on the hard and soft decisions algorithms

It is proved that hard decision algorithms are more appropriate than a soft decision for low-density parity-check (LDPC) decoding since they are less complex at the decoding level. On the other hand, it is notable that the soft decision algorithm outperforms the hard decision one in terms of the bit error rate (BER) gap. In order to minimize the BER and the gap between these two families of LDPC codes, a new LDPC decoding algorithm is suggested in this paper, which is based on both the normalized min-sum (NMS) and modified-weighted bit-flipping (MWBF). The proposed algorithm is named normalized min sum- modified weighted bit flipping (NMSMWBF). The MWBF is executed after the NMS algorithm. The simulations show that our algorithm outperforms the NMS in terms of BER at 10-8 over the additive white gaussian noise (AWGN) channel by 0.25 dB. Furthermore, the proposed NMSMWBF and the NMS are both at the same level of decoding difficulty.