On the Relationship Between Belief Propagation Decoding and Joint Maximum Likelihood Detection

—Belief propagation, via a novel reinterpretation of the Bethe free energy’s pseudo-dual, is shown to be related to a novel relaxation of maximum likelihood detection via a constrained optimization. The conventional maximum likelihood detection falls out for a zero constraint, and belief propagation’s fixed points are obtained for other constraint values.

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: TCOM
• Authors: John MacLaren Walsh, Phillip A. Regalia
• Keywords: Bethe Free Energy, Conventional Maximum Likelihood, Maximum Likelihood Detection, TCOM 2010