A New Class of Braided Block Codes Constructed by Convolutional Interleavers

Parallel Concatenated Block (PCB) codes are conventionally represented as high-rate codes with low error correcting capability. To form a reliable and outstanding code, this paper presents a modification on the structure of PCB codes, which is accomplished by encoding some parity bits of one of their component codes. For the newly proposed code, named as the braided code, non-stuff bit-based convolutional interleavers are applied, aiming to minimize the design complexity while ensuring the proper permutations of the original message and selected parity bits. To precisely determine the error correcting capability, a tight bound for the minimum weight of braided code is presented. Additionally, further analyses are provided, which verify iterative decoding performance and the complexity of the constructed code. It is concluded that an outstanding braided code is formed by utilizing a reasonable number of iterations applied at its decoding processes, while maintaining its design complexity at a level similar to other well-known codes. The significant performance of short and long-length-based braided codes is evident in both waterfall and error floor regions.