Generalized product codes (GPCs) are extensions of product codes (PCs) where
coded bits are protected by two component codes but not necessarily arranged in
a rectangular array. It has recently been shown that there exists a large class
of deterministic GPCs (including, e.g., irregular PCs, half-product codes,
staircase codes, and certain braided codes) for which the asymptotic
performance under iterative bounded-distance decoding over the binary erasure
channel (BEC) can be rigorously characterized in terms of a density evolution
analysis. In this paper, the analysis is extended to the case where
transmission takes place over parallel BECs with different erasure
probabilities. We use this model to predict the code performance in a coded
modulation setup with higher-order signal constellations. We also discuss the
design of the bit mapper that determines the allocation of the coded bits to
the modulation bits of the signal constellation.Comment: invited and accepted paper for the special session "Recent Advances
in Coding for Higher Order Modulation" at the International Symposium on
Turbo Codes & Iterative Information Processing, Brest, France, 201
