Bounds on the map threshold of iterative decoding systems with erasure noise

Iterative decoding and codes on graphs were first devised by Gallager in 1960, and then rediscovered by Berrou, Glavieux and Thitimajshima in 1993. This technique plays an important role in modern communications, especially in coding theory and practice. In particular, low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes, introduced by Gallager in the 1960s, are the class of codes at the heart of iterative coding. Since these codes are quite general and exhibit good performance under message-passing decoding, they play an important role in communications research today. A thorough analysis of iterative decoding systems and the relationship between maximum a posteriori (MAP) and belief propagation (BP) decoding was initiated by Measson, Montanari, and Urbanke. This analysis is based on density evolution (DE), and extrinsic information transfer (EXIT) functions, introduced by ten Brink. Following their work, this thesis considers the MAP decoding thresholds of three iterative decoding systems. First, irregular repeat-accumulate (IRA) and accumulaterepeataccumulate (ARA) code ensembles are analyzed on the binary erasure channel (BEC). Next, the joint iterative decoding of LDPC codes is studied on the dicode erasure channel (DEC). The DEC is a two-state intersymbol-interference (ISI) channel with erasure noise, and it is the simplest example of an ISI channel with erasure noise. Then, we introduce a slight generalization of the EXIT area theorem and apply the MAP threshold bound for the joint decoder. Both the MAP and BP erasure thresholds are computed and compared with each other. The result quantities the loss due to iterative decoding Some open questions include the tightness of these bounds and the extensions to non-erasure channels