Block Markov Superposition Transmission of BCH Codes With Iterative Erasures-and-Errors Decoders

In this paper, we present the block Markov superposition transmission of BCH (BMST-BCH) codes, which can be constructed to obtain a very low error floor. To reduce the implementation complexity, we design a low complexity iterative sliding-window decoding algorithm, in which only binary and/or erasure messages are processed and exchanged between processing units. The error floor can be predicted by the proposed genie-aided lower bounds, while the waterfall performance can be analyzed by the density evolution method. To evaluate the error floor of the constructed BMST-BCH codes at a very low bit error rate (BER) region, we propose a fast simulation approach. Numerical results show that, at a target BER of 10-15, the proposed BMST-BCH code with hard-decision can achieve a net coding gain (NCG) of 10.55 dB with 25% overhead, while a soft-decision design can yield an NCG of 10.74 dB. The construction of BMST-BCH codes is flexible to trade off latency against performance at all overheads of interest and may find applications in optical transport networks as an attractive candidate.