Parallel Trellis-Stage-Combining BCJR for High-Throughput CUDA Decoder of CCSDS SCPPM

The Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS) standard for high photon efficiency uses a serially-concatenated (SC) code to encode pulse position modulated laser light. A convolutional encoder serves as the outer code and an accumulator serves as the inner code. These two component codes are connected through an interleaver. This coding scheme is called Serially Concatenated convolutionally coded Pulse Position Modulation (SCPPM) and it is used for NASA's Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) experiment. For traditional decoding that traverses the trellis forwards and backwards according to the Bahl Cocke Jelinek and Raviv (BCJR) algorithm, the latency is on the order of the length of the trellis, which has 10,080 stages for the rate 2/3 DSOC code. This paper presents a novel alternative approach that simultaneously processes all trellis stages, successively combining pairs of stages into a meta-stage. This approach has latency that is on the order of the log base-2 of the number of stages. The new decoder is implemented using the Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) platform on an Nvidia Graphics Processing Unit (GPU). Compared to Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) implementations, the GPU implementation offers easier development, scalability, and portability across GPU models. The GPU implementation provides a dramatic increase in speed that facilitates more thorough simulation as well as enables a shift from FPGA to GPU processors for DSOC ground stations.