Low-complexity non-iterative soft-decision BCH decoder architecture for WBAN applications

This paper presents a low-complexity non-iterative soft-decision Bose-Chaudhuri-Hocquenghem (SD-BCH) decoder architecture and design technique for wireless body area networks (WBANs). A SD-BCH decoder with test syndrome computation, a syndrome calculator, Chien search and metric check, and error location decision is proposed. The proposed SD-BCH decoder not only uses test syndromes, but also does not have an iteration process. The proposed SD-BCH decoder provides a 0.75~1 dB coding gain compared to a hard-decision BCH (HD-BCH) decoder, and almost similar coding gain compared to a conventional SD-BCH decoder. The proposed SD-BCH (63, 51) decoder was designed and implemented using 90-nm CMOS standard cell technology. Synthesis results show that the proposed non-iterative SD-BCH decoder using a serial structure can lead to a 75% reduction in hardware complexity and a clock speed 3.8 times faster than a conventional SD-BCH decoder.