Genetic Algorithm Aided Design of Component Codes for Irregular Variable Length Coding

In this paper we propose a novel real-valued free distance metric (RV-FDM) for comparing the error correction capabilities of variable length error correction (VLEC) codebooks that have the same integer-valued free distance lower bounds. We demonstrate that VLEC codebooks having higher RV-FDMs tend to have extrinsic information transfer (EXIT) functions with more pronounced 'S'-shapes. Furthermore, we show that higher-accuracy EXIT chart matching can be achieved if the component EXIT functions of an irregular code exhibit more variety. This motivates the employment of our novel genetic algorithm for designing the component VLEC codes of irregular variable length coding, that have particular EXIT functions, in addition to exhibiting desirable bit entropies and decoding complexities.