Concatenated zigzag Hadamard codes

In this correspondence, we introduce a new class of low-rate error correction codes called zigzag Hadamard (ZH) codes and their concatenation schemes. Each member of this class of codes is specified by a highly structured zigzag graph with each segment being a Hadamard codeword. The ZH codes enjoy extremely simple encoding and very low-complexity soft-input-soft-output (SISO) decoding based on a posteriori probability (APP) fast Hadamard transform (FHT) technique. We present an asymptotic performance analysis of the proposed concatenated ZH codes using the extrinsic mutual information transfer (EXIT) chart for infinite-length codes. We also provide a union bound analysis of the error performance for finite-length codes. Furthermore, the concatenated ZH codes are shown to be a good class of codes in the low-rate region. Specifically, a rate-0.0107 concatenated code with three ZH components and an interleaver size of 65536 can achieve the bit error rate (BER) performance of 10^-5 at - 1.15 dB, which is only 0.44 dB away from the ultimate Shannon limit. The proposed concatenated ZH codes offer similar performance as another class of low-rate codes-the turbo-Hadamard codes, and better performance than superorthogonal turbo codes, with much lower encoding and decoding complexities. © 2006 IEEE.