Modern communication systems are designed to enable reliable and fast information transfer. Therefore, efficient channel coding and decoding strategies are needed, which guarantee sufficiently low probability of erroneous reception with affordable receiver complexity. For many channel codes, optimal decoding with traditional methods is prohibitively complex. The challenge therefore lies in designing reduced-complexity decoding algorithms that achieve optimal or near-optimal performance. This thesis is devoted to one such algorithm - Bidirectional Efficient Algorithm for Searching code Trees. The taming of the BEAST is laid out in several steps. After an introduction to coding, trellis and tree representations of codes are reviewed as prerequisites for understanding the BEAST. Maximum-likelihood decoding using BEAST, and its generalization to list decoding are presented first. An investigation of geometrical aspects of list decoding has resulted in new bounds on the list error probability. It is shown that the performance of a list decoder is determined by the worst-case list configuration, which yields the minimum list distance of a code. A commonly used approach for achieving a good performance/complexity tradeoff is to use concatenated codes with iterative decoding, where decoders of constituent codes, employed as separate entities, iteratively exchange information on decoded symbols. In such a setup, the decoders provide soft symbol reliabilities in the form of a posteriori probabilities (APPs). It is shown that accurate APP approximations can be obtained from a short list of the most probable codewords found by BEAST. This decoding method is referred to as BEAST-APP decoding. Product codes belong to the class of iteratively decodable codes and the BEAST-APP decoder is used for decoding of constituent codes, yielding good performance with low complexity. Finally, BEAST is applied as soft-input soft-output detector for transmission over intersymbol interference channels. Its advantages and limitations in comparison to existing decoding methods are discussed. (Less)

The Transatlantic gaze: masculinities, youth and the American Imaginary

Taming of the BEAST

It is well known that young men constitute a high-risk group in terms of accidents involving both themselves and others. But comparatively little is known about the roles of gender, masculinity and ...

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On Men and Cars : An Ethnographic Study of Gendered, Risky and Dangerous Relations

Adam in ads: a thirty-year look at mediated masculinities in advertising in Finland and the US

'Lifting the Cloak on Manhood' Coverage of Xhosa Male Circumcision in the South African Press

Although gender and non-gender scholars have studied men, such an academic exercise requires a critical and focused study of masculine subjects in particular social contexts, which is what this book attempts to do. This empirically rich collection of essays, the seventh of the CODESRIA Gender Series, deals with critical examinations of various shades and ramifications of Africa's masculinities and what these portend for the peoples of Africa and for gender relations in the continent. So much has changed in terms of notions and expressions of masculinities in Africa since ancient times, but many aspects of contemporary masculinities were fashioned during and since the colonial period. The papers in this volume were initially discussed at the 2005 month-long CODESRIA Gender Institute in Dakar. The contributors are gender scholars drawn from various disciplines in the wide fields of the humanities and the social sciences with research interests in the critical study of men and masculinities in Africa. The CODESRIA Gender Series aims at keeping alive and nourishing the African social science knowledge base with insightful research and debates that challenge conventional wisdom, structures and ideologies that are narrowly informed by caricatures of gender realities. The series strives to showcase the best in African gender research and provide a platform for emerging new talents to flower.

The Transatlantic gaze: masculinities, youth and the American Imaginary

Citations

Taming of the BEAST

On Men and Cars : An Ethnographic Study of Gendered, Risky and Dangerous Relations

Adam in ads: a thirty-year look at mediated masculinities in advertising in Finland and the US

'Lifting the Cloak on Manhood' Coverage of Xhosa Male Circumcision in the South African Press

Masculinities in Contemporary Africa

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