Braided Block Codes

A new class of binary iteratively decodable codes with good decoding performance is presented. These codes, called braided block codes (BBCs), operate on continuous data streams and are constructed by interconnection of two component block codes. BBCs can be considered as convolutional (or sliding) version of either Elias' product codes or expander codes. In this paper, we define BBCs, describe methods of their construction, analyze code properties, and study asymptotic iterative decoding performance.