Turbo code

In information theory, turbo codes (originally in French Turbocodes) are a class of high-performance forward error correction (FEC) codes developed around 1990-91 (but first published in 1993), which were the first practical codes to closely approach the channel capacity, a theoretical maximum for the code rate at which reliable communication is still possible given a specific noise level. Turbo codes are finding use in 3G/4G mobile communications (e.g. in UMTS and LTE) and in (deep space) satellite communications as well as other applications where designers seek to achieve reliable information transfer over bandwidth- or latency-constrained communication links in the presence of data-corrupting noise. Turbo codes are nowadays competing with LDPC codes, which provide similar performance.