Design and Implementation of Turbo encoder/ decoder using FPGA

Abstract

Turbo codes are used to reduce the errors that occur when sending a message through a communication channel. They do that by detecting and correcting these errors. They are widely used in applications that need to transmit the information reliably over a noisy channel, due to their good performance that reaches to the Shannon limit of the channel capacity. This work will design the turbo codes using MATLAB program by two programming methods Simulink and M.file. The Simulink design is used to build the turbo codes and to implement them practically on an FPGA device using VHDL code. While in M.file is used to measure the turbo code performance in terms of Bit Error Rate (BER). BER is tested by changing the parameters of the turbo codes like the codes length, the iteration numbers, also by taking different rates, and the different decoding algorithms. The effect of the puncturing and non-puncturing operation is also presented. Then the obtained simulation results can be compared with each other to discuss which parameters can be used to give the best performance in designing the turbo codes circuit.