  In this paper we present a thorough analysis of non binary LDPC codes over
the binary erasure channel. First, the decoding of non binary LDPC codes is
investigated. The proposed algorithm performs on-the-fly decoding, i.e. it
starts decoding as soon as the first symbols are received, which generalizes
the erasure decoding of binary LDPC codes. Next, we evaluate the asymptotical
performance of ensembles of non binary LDPC codes, by using the density
evolution method. Density evolution equations are derived by taking into
consideration both the irregularity of the bipartite graph and the probability
distribution of the graph edge labels. Finally, infinite-length performance of
some ensembles of non binary LDPC codes for different edge label distributions
are shown.
