Combining serial and parallel decoding for turbo codes

Reducing the decoding latency of the turbo codes is important to real-time applications. Conventionally, the decoding of the turbo codes (TC) runs in serial fashion, which means only one of the constituent soft decoders runs at a time. Parallel decoding (PD) refers to running the soft decoders in parallel. Although it delivers the output faster (compared to the serial decoding (SD)), it affects the bit- and frame-error rates. This paper proposes a decoding procedure that combines both PD and SD. It bridges the two decoding modes to determine the best combination scheme to achieve the required level of performance at an acceptable decoding latency. Presented results show how this procedure can mitigate the performance degradation at a slight increase in the decoding latenc