List Message Passing Decoding of Non-binary Low-Density Parity-Check Codes

Abstract: A decoding algorithm for $q$-ary low-density parity-check codes over the $q$-ary symmetric channel is introduced. The exchanged messages are lists of symbols from $\Fq$. A density evolution analysis for maximum list sizes $1$ and $2$ is developed. Thresholds for selected regular low-density parity-check code ensembles are computed showing gains with respect to a similar algorithm in the literature. Finite-length simulation results confirm the asymptotic analysis.