Kikuchi approximation method for joint decoding of LDPC codes and partial-response channels

In this letter, we apply the Kikuchi approximation method to the problem of joint decoding of a low-density parity-check code and a partial-response channel. The Kikuchi method is, in general, more powerful than the conventional loopy belief propagation (BP) algorithm, and can produce better approximations to an underlying inference problem. We will first review the Kikuchi approximation method and the generalized BP algorithm, which is an iterative message-passing algorithm based on this method. We will then report simulation results which show that the Kikuchi method outperforms the best conventional iterative method.