2017 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT)

An Iterative Soft-decision Decoding Algorithm for

Reed-Solomon Codes
Huang-Chang Lee†‡ , Jyun-Han Wu∗ , Chung-Hsuan Wang§ , and Yeong-Luh Ueng∗¶ , Senior Member, IEEE
∗ Dept. of Electrical Engineering, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan, R.O.C.
† Dept. of Electrical Engineering, Chang Gung University, Taoyuan City, Taiwan, R.O.C.
‡ Dept. of Neurological Surgery of Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Taoyuan, 33302, Taiwan.
§ Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan, R.O.C.
¶ Institute of Communications Engineering, National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan, R.O.C.

Abstract—This paper proposes an iterative soft-decision de-
coding algorithm for Reed-Solomon (RS) codes. The proposed
decoding algorithm combines the concepts of adapting the
parity-check matrix and informed dynamic scheduling decoding.
The parity-check matrix is re-arranged before each iteration,
where the systematic part is mapped to the least reliable bits,
consequently reducing their influence on the other bits. Using
dynamic scheduling, the more important decoding messages are
updated to these least reliable bits, meaning that the majority
of the error bits with low reliability can be corrected. When the
proposed integrated decoding is applied to (255, 239) RS code,
the difference between its frame error rate performance (FER)
and the maximum-likelihood (ML) bound can be reduced to 0.8
dB, and a gain of about 0.1 dB is achieved compared to all the
previously recorded soft-decision decoding for RS codes.
Index Terms—error-control codes, Reed-Solomon codes, soft-
decision decoding, belief propagation, informed-dynamic schedul-
ing.
I. I NTRODUCTION
Among linear block codes with the same code length and
code rate, Reed-Solomon (RS) codes are able to achieve the
largest possible minimum distance, and have become one
of the most popular error-correcting codes used for many
applications [1]-[3]. Although the algebraic hard-decision de-
coding (HDD) algorithm can provide practical performance,
the potential of the error-correcting capabilities of RS codes
without the need to introduce soft information has not yet been
thoroughly explored, and several researches focus to the soft
decision decoding algorithms of RS codes [7]-[10].
Iterative belief propagation (BP) is one of the most pop-
ular soft decision decoding schemes for low-density parity-
check (LDPC) codes, but cannot be directly applied to RS
codes because of the high-density parity-check matrices. The
correlation between the decoding messages increases rapidly
after a few iterations and restrict the convergence abilities. In
order to mitigate the correlation, adaptive belief-propagation
(ABP) decoder [8] combines iterative BP with the adaptive
parity check matrix (ADP) algorithm. The non-binary parity-
check matrix of RS code is first transferred to the binary image
This work is supported in part by the Ministry of Science and Technology
of the R.O.C. under grants MOST 103-2221-E-007-025-MY3, MOST 103-
2221-E-009-046-MY3 and MOST 105-2218-E-182-002
matrix. In order to limit the accumulation of decoding message
correlations, the magnitude of the decoding message is scaled
down using a damping coefficient, and the ADP algorithm
is adopted to modify the parity-check matrices using row
operations before the next iteration.
Using the ADP algorithm, the received code bits are sorted
according to their reliability, and the least reliable bits are
mapped to the systematic part of the binary image matrix. This
means that in the corresponding bipartite graph, the variable
nodes representing these least reliable bits are connected to
only one check node, and the influence of the unreliable
messages from these least reliable variable nodes (LRVNs) can
be minimized. The decoding messages to be used by the ABP
algorithm are propagated by following a flooding schedule,
meaning that the number of messages updated to each variable
node is equal to the number of neighboring check nodes,
and the degree-1 LRVNs are only updated once in a single
iteration. It can be expected that if these LRVNs are updated
more often, the received vectors can be correctly decoded with
a higher probability.
In order to update the degree-1 LRVNs more than once in
each iteration, a double-polling residual BP (DP-RBP) decoder
is proposed in this paper, where the selection of updated
decoding messages is based on the idea of informed dynamic
scheduling (IDS) [4]. A variety of IDS decoders have been ap-
plied to LDPC codes [4]-[6], and a significant improvement in
error-rate performance has been achieved. Since the DP-RBP
is applied to the high-density binary image matrices rather than
the sparse parity check matrices for LDPC codes, the ADP
algorithm is still adopted in order to sort the reliability of the
variable nodes. By using the DP-RBP decoder, the opportunity
for each decoding message to be updated is different, and
the important messages can be propagated more often. The
importance can be measured according to a metric known as
the “residual”[4], and the number of decoding messages that
are updated to the LRVNs is no longer limited by the degree.
Besides the introduction of the dynamic scheduling, DP-
RBP also removes the damping coefficient from the ABP.
The decoding messages processed in a single iteration no
longer need to be scaled down, and the log-likelihood ratio
(LLR) values accumulated on the variable nodes are reset to
their channel values before the next iteration. In other words,

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 2017 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT)
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the accumulated LLR values are only used by the ADP for  
sorting only, and will not be maintained for the next iteration. 




 





The effect of the correlations between the decoding messages
is limited in a single iteration. Simulation results show that,
with the more fair assignment of decoding resources and the
reset operation, a significant improvement in the error-rate
performance is achieved using the DP-RBP decoder. When
the proposed DP-RBP decoder is applied to (255, 239) RS
code, the difference between the maximum-likelihood (ML)
bound and the frame error rate (FER) can be narrowed to
about 0.8dB. Compared to the best soft-decision decoding for
RS codes proposed in previous work, an improvement of about
0.1 dB can be achieved.
II. P RELIMINARY
A. RS Codes and their Binary Image
Let a primitive element in a GF(2m ) be denoted as β, for
an (N, K) RS code over GF(2m ). Its parity-check matrix can
be expressed as:
⎛ ⎞
1 β ... β N −1
⎜1 β2 ... β 2(N −1) ⎟
⎜ ⎟
Hs = ⎜ . . .. .. ⎟, (1)
⎝ .. .. . . ⎠
1 β δ−1 ... β (δ−1)(N −1)
and the minimum distance for this (N, K) RS code is δ =
N − K + 1. If a symbol for an RS code over a GF(2m ) is
made up of m bits, then the parity-check matrix Hs for the
(N, K) RS code can be transferred to the binary image [8].
The size of Hb is (n − k)-by-n, where n = N × m and
k = K × m. The binary image parity-check matrix Hb can be
expressed using a bipartite graph that has n − k check nodes
and n variable nodes.
A codeword of an (N, K) RS code contains n = N × m
bits and can be represented as v = [v1 , v2 , . . . , vn ], where
j = 1, 2, . . . n and vj ∈ {0, 1}. Assume that the codeword bits
are transmitted using BPSK modulation through the AWGN
channel, then the received vector can be represented as y =
(−2v+1)+w, where w = [w1 , w2 , . . . , wn ] is the noise vector,
and wj is a Gaussian random variable with a zero mean and
a variance σ 2 , yj denotes the j-th component of the received
vector y. In the initial state, the LLR of the j-th variable node
P (v =0|y )
is evaluated as L0 (vj ) = log P (vjj =1|yjj ) , and is also called the
of the i-th variable node
channel value of the j-th variable node.
B. The ABP algorithm
The binary image matrix Hb contains high density non-zero
elements, its corresponding bipartite graph contains a large
number of short cycles, and the correlation between messages
increases rapidly after a small number of iterations. The
ADP algorithm is embedded in the ABP decoder [8] used to
modify the binary image matrix, as well as the corresponding
bipartite graph, meaning that the correlation between decoding
messages can be mitigated after each iteration. The variable
nodes are first sorted based on their reliability according to the
magnitude of the LLR values. Using elementary row operation,
the first (n − k) columns of the modified parity check matrix
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௟
‫ݒ‬ଵ௟ ‫ݒ‬ଶ௟ ௟
‫ݒ‬௡ି௞ ௟
‫ݒ‬௡ି௞ାଵ ௟
‫ݒ‬௡ି௞ାଶ ‫ݒ‬௡ିଵ ‫ݒ‬௡௟
ܿଵ ܿଶ ܿ௡ି௞
Fig. 1. The bipartite graph corresponding to the parity check matrix modified
using the ADP algorithm.
form an identity matrix, i.e., the systematic part of the binary
image matrix, the corresponding LRVNs are then connected
to only one check node.
Fig. 1 shows an example of the Hlb matrix after the l-th
iteration, and the corresponding v l is a reordered version of
v. The components vjl in v l for j ∈ {1, 2, · · · , n} are sorted
according to their reliability. In Fig. 1, |Ll (v1l )| ≤ |Ll (v2l )| ≤
· · · ≤ |Ll (vnl )|, where Ll (vjl ), is the LLR value of the j-th
variable node after the l-th iteration, and j ∈ {1, 2, · · · , n}.
The first (n − k) variable nodes are mapped to the systematic
part of Hlb . The sum-product algorithm (SPA) is used to
generate the decoding messages from:

Lvj →ci = mca →vj + Lvj , (2)
ca ∈N (vj )
Lvb →ci
mci →vj = 2tanh−1 ( tanh( )), (3)
2
vb ∈N (ci )\vj
where vb ∈ N (ci ) \ vj denotes all the variable nodes
neighboring to ci , except for vj . The variable-to-check node
(V2C) messages and check-to-variable (C2V) messages are
respectively generated according to (2) and (3). The initial
values of the V2C messages from the j-th variable node is
equal to the LLR value, i.e., Lvj →ci = L0 (vj0 ).
After l iterations, the LLR value
is denoted as Ll (vil ) = Lvj + α ca ∈N (vj ) mca →vj , where
0 < α < 1 is a damping coefficient [8]. After the maximum
number of iterations is reached, the binary decoding results can
be derived by applying a hard decision to the LLR values.
If the hard-decision result is unable to satisfy all the check
nodes in the binary image matrix, then conventional non-
binary algebraic decoding can be used to obtain the final
decoding results for the RS codes.
III. P ROPOSED D OUBLE - POLLING RBP SELECTION
When the received vector is decoded using the iterative
BP algorithm, it is more likely to be correctly decoded if
sufficient decoding messages that have a high reliability are
collected by all variable nodes. Based on this concept, any
 2017 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT)
variable nodes that have a low reliability should be updated
more often. In contrast, any decoding messages from these
low-reliability variable nodes should be considered suspicious,
and their propagation should be limited, or the convergence of
the decoding process may be inhibited.
The ABP decoder successfully constrains the propagation of
unreliable decoding messages by mapping the LRVNs to the
systematic part of the binary image matrix, where only one
check node can be used to generate the decoding message
for each LRVN. However, since the decoding messages from
the ABP are propagated by following a flooding schedule,
each LRVN can be received using only a single C2V message
in each iteration. In other words, when the influence of the
LRVNs on the other MRVNs is minimized, the possibility that
their reliability can be increased is also reduced.
In order to enable the LRVNs to receive more updates
while simultaneously limiting their unreliable influence, the
schedule of the decoding message update can be completed
using an IDS decoder, where the update sequence are arranged
according to a predetermined metric, and only the important
messages are selected to be updated. Since the reliability of the
variable nodes is related to the C2V messages, the C2V resid-
ual can be considered as a suitable metric for decoding the RS
codes. The C2V residual was first included in the RBP decoder
are evaluated by
described in [4], which is defined as the absolute value of the
difference between the current C2V value and the C2V value
about to be updated, i.e., rC2V (i, j) = |mpre ci →vj − mci →vj |,
where mpreci →vj is the pre-computation of the next update. The
pre-computation can be generated by using (3).
In this work, the comparison of the C2V residual will take
place between the C2V messages generated on a single check
node only. Since according to (3), the messages generated on
the same check node use the same set of variable nodes,
the comparison between them can be fairer. In addition,
the C2V messages generated on different check nodes may
be correlated since the high-density binary image matrix is
derived from the parity-check matrix for the RS codes. This
comparison can be misleading when considering a scheduling
arrangement.
The arrangement of the schedule must be focused on those
variable nodes that directly affect the final decoding results.
In a single iteration, the variable nodes are selected following
the sort order that was generated using several cycles of the
ADP algorithm. In the p-th cycle, when the j-th variable
node is identified, the comparison of the C2V residual with
its p-th neighboring check node take place. After the C2V
message with the maximum residual from the p-th check node
neighboring to the j-th variable node is updated, the decoding
operation switches to the p-th check node neighboring to the
j + 1-th variable node. Only a single message is updated from
each check node in each C2V residual comparison operation.
This process can be regarded as a form of polling between
the check nodes that is inserted in a polling operation that is
performed between the variable nodes, which, consequently,
inspires the name “double-polling” RBP (DP-RBP). A more
detailed description of the DP-RBP decoder is presented in
Algorithm 1, , where the “double-polling” operation can be
observed in Step 4.
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3
Suppose that when using the ADP algorithm, the binary
image matrix Hlb illustrated in Fig. 1 is obtained prior to
the (l + 1)-th iteration. The selection of the variable nodes
begins from the node with the lowest reliability. Since the
LRVNs are mapped to the systematic part, then all check
nodes update a single C2V message once the LRVNs have
been selected during each cycle. In contrast, those check nodes
neighboring the MRVNs update the C2V message alternately.
Each updated message is selected as the messages with the
maximum C2V residual among the connected check nodes,
and the high-degree check nodes, i.e., those with a large
number of neighboring variable nodes, have more opportunity
to propagate their C2V messages.
Suppose that the j-th variable node received the updated
C2V message, the V2C messages for the i-th check node can
then be generated as:

Lvj →ci = mca →vj + Lvj . (4)
ca ∈N (vj )\ci
It is worth noting that equations (2) and (4) are different in
that C2V message from the i-th check node is excluded when
the V2C message is generated in the DP-RBP decoder using
(4).
A posteriori probability (APP) values
DP-RBP decoder as Ll (vil ) = Lvj + ca ∈N (vj ) mca →vj .
where the C2V messages are directly updated to the variable
node without the need for scaling down using the damping
coefficient. Once the number of updated C2V messages is
equal to the number of edges in the bipartite graph, the (l +1)-
th iteration is complete, the ADP algorithm resorts the order
of the variable nodes based on their APP values, and a new
binary image matrix Hl+1 b is constructed for the next iteration.
The reliability for all variable nodes is reset to the initial LLR
values before the next iteration begins. In other words, the
APP values accumulated in the previous iterations are used to
modify the binary image matrix, and the correlation between
the decoding messages is limited within a single iteration.
IV. P ERFORMANCE E VALUATION
The FER performance when the DP-RBP decoder is applied
to (31, 25) and (63, 55) RS code is shown in Figs. 2 and
3, respectively. The ADP algorithm is processed by the ABP
(20,3) 20 times in order to modify the binary image matrix
modification, and 3 iterations are completed before the matrix
is changed again. This means that total of 60 iterations are
performed by the ABP (20,3) decoder. When using the same
number of iterations for both codes, the DP-RBP decoder can
provide a gain of about 0.2 dB at an FER of 10−4 compared
to the ABP (20,3) decoder, the DP-RBP decoder. Moreover,
a near ML performance can be achieved when using the
proposed DP-RBP decoding based on 60 and 480 iterations
for (31, 25) and (63, 55) RS codes, respectively.
Fig. 4 shows that, when the DP-RBP decoder is applied to
(255, 239) RS code, the ML bound cannot be approached
using the DP-RBP decoder alone, even if 4000 iterations
are available, and the gain is marginal compared to the
ABP (80,50) decoder, which performs the same number of
 2017 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT)
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Algorithm 1 Iterative Decoding Algorithm by DP-RBP

Step 1 : Initialization: Set the size of the binary image Hb
to be (n − k) × n, set the iteration index l = 0 and the LLR
values from the channel observation: L0 = σ22 y
Step 2 : Adapt the parity check matrix by using the ADP
algorithm, and obtain Hlb for the next iteration.
Step 3 : Set the cycle index p = 1, and set the variable
node index j = 1, j = 1, 2, . . . n.
Step 4 : Begin the polling of the DP-RBP decoding:
a) For the i-th check node, compute all rC2V (i, j) values,
and record the index of the node with the maximum
value. i = |N (vj )| mod p.
b) Update the C2V value for the node with the maximum
value and then update the related V2C values.
c) j = (j + 1). if j > n, p = p + 1 and j = 1, begins
the next cycle.
Step 5 : Repeat Step 4 until the total number of updated Fig. 3. The FER performance for (63,55) RS code.
C2V messages is equal to the number of 1s in Hlb .
Step 6 : Perform a hard decision and apply conventional 10 0 Algebraic HDD
non-binary algebraic hard decision decoding. KV(100) [9]

Step 7 :If all check nodes are satisfied, output the results. ABP(60,1) [8]
BMA [7]
Else if l = lmax , declare a decoding failure. 10 -1
ABP,(80,50) [8]
DP-RBP,iter=4000
Else set l = l + 1 and return to Step 2 to begin another ML lower bound
iteration.
10 -2
FER

10 -3

10 -4

4 4.5 5 5.5 6 6.5 7 7.5 8 8.5

Eb/N0(dB)

Fig. 4. The FER performance for (255,239) RS code.

10 0
(127,107)ABP (80,50)
(127,107)DP-RBP,iter=60
(127,107)DP-RBP,iter=4000
(127,121)ABP (80,50)
10 -1
(127,121)DP-RBP,iter=60
(127,121)DP-RBP,iter=4000
Fig. 2. The FER performance for (31,25) RS code.
10 -2
FER

iterations. This implies that improvement in the error-rate

performance is negligible when using additional iterations. 10 -3
Fig. 5 is used to illustrate the performance of DP-RBP
decoder when it is applied to (127, 121) and (127, 107) RS
codes. A total of 42 and 120 check nodes are respectively 10 -4

contained in the binary image matrices of the same length

(127, 121) and (127, 107) RS codes at different rates. 10 -5

3 4 5 6 7 8 9
V. C ONCLUSION Eb/N0 (dB)

In this work, a DP-RBP decoder has been devised. The

dynamic scheduling DP-RBP decoder is able to efficiently Fig. 5. The FER performance for (127,121) and (127,107) RS codes.
correct any erroneous bits that have a low reliability. When
the DP-RBP decoder decoder is applied to RS codes, a gain

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in FER performance of more than 0.1 dB can be provided

compared to the best results achieved by the RS decoders
reported in the prior literature. For the popular (255, 239)
RS code, an FER performance that approaches to only 0.8 dB
away from the ML bound has been achieved.

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