Decoding of Turbo Codes in Symmetric Alpha-Stable Noise

Abstract

This paper investigates the decoding of turbo codes in impulsive symmetric α-stable (SαS) noise. Due to the nonexistence of a closed-form expression for the probability density function (pdf) of α-stable processes, numerical-based SαS pdf is used to derive branch transition probability (btp) for the maximum a posteriori turbo decoder. Results show that in Gaussian noise, the turbo decoder achieves similar performance using both the conventional and the proposed btps, but in impulsive channels, the turbo decoder with the proposed btp substantially outperforms the turbo decoder utilizing the conventional btp. Results also confirm that the turbo decoder incorporating the proposed btp outperforms the existing Cauchy-based turbo decoder in non-Cauchy impulsive noise, while the two decoders accomplish similar performance in Cauchy noise.