Recently, non-binary low-density parity-check (NB-LDPC) codes starts to show their superiority in achieving significant coding gains when moderate codeword lengths are adopted. However, the overwhelming decoding complexity keeps NB-LDPC codes from being widely employed in modern communication devices. This paper proposes a hybrid message-passing decoding algorithm which consumes very low computational complexity. It achieves competitive error performance compared with conventional Min-max algorithm. Simulation result on a (255,174) cyclic code shows that this algorithm obtains at least 0.5dB coding gain over other state-of-the-art low-complexity NB-LDPC decoding algorithms. A partial-parallel NB-LDPC decoder architecture for cyclic NB-LDPC codes is also developed based on this algorithm. Optimization schemes are employed to cut off hard decision symbols in RAMs and also to store only part of the reliability messages. In addition, the variable node units are redesigned especially for the proposed algorithm. Synthesis results demonstrate that about 24.3% gates and 12% memories can be saved over previous works.

Majority-logic algorithms are devised for decoding non-binary LDPC codes in order to reduce computational complexity. However, compared with conventional belief propagation algorithms, majority-logic algorithms suffer from severe bit error performance degradation. This paper presents a low-complexity reliability-based algorithm aiming at improving error correcting ability of majority-logic algorithms. Reliability measures for check nodes are novelly introduced to realize mutual update between variable message and check message, and hence more efficient reliability propagation can be achieved, similar to belief-propagation algorithm. Simulation results on NB-LDPC codes with different characteristics demonstrate that our algorithm can reduce the bit error ratio by more than one order of magnitude and the coding gain enhancement over ISRB-MLGD can reach 0.2-2.0dB, compared with both the ISRB-MLGD and IISRB-MLGD algorithms. Moreover, simulations on typical LDPC codes show that the computational complexity of the proposed algorithm is closely equivalent to ISRB-MLGD algorithm, and is less than 10% of Min-max algorithm. As a result, the proposed algorithm achieves a more efficient trade-off between decoding computational complexity and error performance.