This paper studies specific properties of nonbinary low-density parity-check (NB LDPC) codes when used in coded modulation systems. The paper is focused on the practically important NB LDPC codes over the Galois extension fields GF$(2^{m})$with$m\le 6$used with QAM signaling. Performance of NB LDPC coded transmission strongly depends on the mapping of nonbinary symbols to signal constellation points. We obtain a random coding bound on the maximum-likelihood decoding error probability for an ensemble of random irregular NB LDPC codes used with QAM signaling for specific symbol-to-signal point mappings. This bound is based on the ensemble average squared Euclidean distance spectra derived for these mappings. The simulation results for the belief-propagation decoding in the coded modulation schemes with the NB quasi-cyclic (QC)-LDPC codes under different mappings are given. Comparisons with the optimized binary QC-LDPC codes in the WiFi and 5G standards, as well as with the new bound, are performed.

We propose a novel approach to optimization of irregular nonbinary (NB) quasi-cyclic (QC)-LDPC codes over small alphabets. In this approach, first, the base parity-check matrices are constructed by a simulated annealing method, and then these matrices are labeled by the field elements while maximizing the so- called generalized girth of the Tanner graph. In order to analyze the performance of the constructed irregular NB LDPC codes, a new ensemble of irregular NB LDPC codes over the extensions of the binary Galois field is introduced. A finite-length random coding bound on the error probability of the maximum-likelihood (ML) decoding over the binary phase shift keying (BPSK) input AWGN channel for the new code ensemble is derived. The frame error rate (FER) performance of the sum-product belief-propagation (BP) decoding of the constructed NB QC-LDPC block codes is compared to that of both the optimized binary QC-LDPC block codes in the 5G standard and the best known NB QC-LDPC codes as well as to the derived random coding bound on the ML decoding error probability. It is shown that the obtained bound predicts the behavior of BP decoding performance of practical NB QC-LDPC codes more accurately than the BP decoding thresholds do.

A finite-length random coding bound on the maximum-likelihood decoding error probability for an ensemble of irregular nonbinary (NB) low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes with QAM signaling for specific code symbol-to-signal mappings is derived. Simulation results for the frame error rate (FER) performance of belief-propagation decoding for the optimized NB quasi-cyclic (QC)-LDPC codes used in various coded modulation schemes are presented. Comparison with the same performance of the optimized binary QC-LDPC block codes in the WiFi and 5G standards, as well as with the new bound, is performed.

We propose a novel approach for optimization of nonbinary (NB) quasi-cyclic (QC)-LDPC codes. In this approach, the base parity-check matrices are constructed by the simulated annealing method, and then labeled while maximizing the so-called generalized girth of the NB LDPC code Tanner graph. Random coding bounds on the ML decoding error probability for ensembles of "almost regular" NB LDPC codes of finite lengths over extensions of the binary Galois field are derived. These bounds are based on the average bit weight spectra for the ensembles of NB LDPC codes. The observed FER performance of the sum-product BP decoding of "almost regular" NB QC-LDPC block codes is presented and compared to the finite-length random coding bounds, as well as to the performance of the optimized binary QC-LDPC block code in the 5G standard. In the waterfall region, the gap between the finite-length bounds on the error probability of the ML decoding and the simulation performance of the BP decoding is about 0.1 – 0.2 dB.