General form of almost instantaneous fixed-to-variable-length codes

A general class of the almost instantaneous fixed-to-variable-length (AIFV) codes is proposed, which contains every possible binary code we can make when allowing finite bits of decoding delay. The contribution of the paper lies in the following. (i) Introducing $N$-bit-delay AIFV codes, constructed by multiple code trees with higher flexibility than the conventional AIFV codes. (ii) Proving that the proposed codes can represent any uniquely-encodable and uniquely-decodable variable-to-variable length codes. (iii) Showing how to express codes as multiple code trees with minimum decoding delay. (iv) Formulating the constraints of decodability as the comparison of intervals in the real number line. The theoretical results in this paper are expected to be useful for further study on AIFV codes.Comment: submitted to IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1607.07247 by other author

Codes and Orbit Covers of Finite Abelian Groups

It is well known that the discrete analogue of a lattice is a linear code which is a vector subspace of Hamming space $\mathbb{F}^n$. The set $\mathbb{F}$ is a finite field and $n \in \mathbb{Z}_{>0}$. Our attempt is to construct a class of lattices such that its discrete analogues are variable length non-linear codes. Let $\mathcal{G}$ and $\mathcal{H}$ be two finite groups, and let $\mathcal{S}$ be a fixed set of generators for $\mathcal{G}$. The homomorphism code is defined as the set of all homomorphisms from $\mathcal{G}$ to $\mathcal{H}$, denoted by, $\mathcal{C} = Hom(\mathcal{G}, \mathcal{H})$. To each homomorphism $\varphi$ between $\mathcal{G}$ and $\mathcal{H}$, a codeword $c_\varphi$ is associated, it is a vector of values of $\varphi$ on the generators in $\mathcal{S}$, that is, $c_\varphi = (\varphi(s_1), \varphi(s_2), \dots, \varphi(s_k))$, where $\varphi(s_i)$ is the image of $s_i \in \mathcal{S}$, $1 \leq i \leq k$. We provide a design to construct a variable length binary non-linear code called as automorphism orbit code from a finite abelian $p$-group of rank more than 1, where $p$ is a prime number. For each finite abelian $p$-group, the codewords of the automorphism orbit code are variable length codewords called as automorphism orbit codewords. Note that homomorphism codes are determined by homomorphisms between groups, whereas automorphism orbit codes are specified by partitions of a number, orbits of a group action, homomorphisms and automorphisms of groups. We make use of elements of $Hom(\mathcal{G}, \mathcal{H})$ to present a cover relation for bit strings of codewords of an automorphism orbit code and formulate a lattice of variable length non-linear codes. Finally, we discuss some information related to the future research work on connections to representation theory of groups and algebras

Systematic Transmission With Fountain Parity Checks for Erasure Channels With Stop Feedback

In this paper, we present new achievability bounds on the maximal achievable rate of variable-length stop-feedback (VLSF) codes operating over a binary erasure channel (BEC) at a fixed message size $M = 2^k$. We provide new bounds for VLSF codes with zero error, infinite decoding times and with nonzero error, finite decoding times. Both new achievability bounds are proved by constructing a new VLSF code that employs systematic transmission of the first $k$ bits followed by random linear fountain parity bits decoded with a rank decoder. For VLSF codes with infinite decoding times, our new bound outperforms the state-of-the-art result for BEC by Devassy \emph{et al.} in 2016. We also give a negative answer to the open question Devassy \emph{et al.} put forward on whether the $23.4\%$ backoff to capacity at $k = 3$ is fundamental. For VLSF codes with finite decoding times, numerical evaluations show that the achievable rate for VLSF codes with a moderate number of decoding times closely approaches that for VLSF codes with infinite decoding times.Comment: 7 pages, double column, 4 figures; comments are welcome! changes in v2: corrected 2 typos in v1. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2205.1539

Spatially Coupled LDPC Codes Constructed from Protographs

In this paper, we construct protograph-based spatially coupled low-density parity-check (SC-LDPC) codes by coupling together a series of L disjoint, or uncoupled, LDPC code Tanner graphs into a single coupled chain. By varying L, we obtain a flexible family of code ensembles with varying rates and frame lengths that can share the same encoding and decoding architecture for arbitrary L. We demonstrate that the resulting codes combine the best features of optimized irregular and regular codes in one design: capacity approaching iterative belief propagation (BP) decoding thresholds and linear growth of minimum distance with block length. In particular, we show that, for sufficiently large L, the BP thresholds on both the binary erasure channel (BEC) and the binary-input additive white Gaussian noise channel (AWGNC) saturate to a particular value significantly better than the BP decoding threshold and numerically indistinguishable from the optimal maximum a-posteriori (MAP) decoding threshold of the uncoupled LDPC code. When all variable nodes in the coupled chain have degree greater than two, asymptotically the error probability converges at least doubly exponentially with decoding iterations and we obtain sequences of asymptotically good LDPC codes with fast convergence rates and BP thresholds close to the Shannon limit. Further, the gap to capacity decreases as the density of the graph increases, opening up a new way to construct capacity achieving codes on memoryless binary-input symmetric-output (MBS) channels with low-complexity BP decoding.Comment: Submitted to the IEEE Transactions on Information Theor

Synchronization recovery and state model reduction for soft decoding of variable length codes

Variable length codes exhibit de-synchronization problems when transmitted over noisy channels. Trellis decoding techniques based on Maximum A Posteriori (MAP) estimators are often used to minimize the error rate on the estimated sequence. If the number of symbols and/or bits transmitted are known by the decoder, termination constraints can be incorporated in the decoding process. All the paths in the trellis which do not lead to a valid sequence length are suppressed. This paper presents an analytic method to assess the expected error resilience of a VLC when trellis decoding with a sequence length constraint is used. The approach is based on the computation, for a given code, of the amount of information brought by the constraint. It is then shown that this quantity as well as the probability that the VLC decoder does not re-synchronize in a strict sense, are not significantly altered by appropriate trellis states aggregation. This proves that the performance obtained by running a length-constrained Viterbi decoder on aggregated state models approaches the one obtained with the bit/symbol trellis, with a significantly reduced complexity. It is then shown that the complexity can be further decreased by projecting the state model on two state models of reduced size

On Universal Properties of Capacity-Approaching LDPC Ensembles

This paper is focused on the derivation of some universal properties of capacity-approaching low-density parity-check (LDPC) code ensembles whose transmission takes place over memoryless binary-input output-symmetric (MBIOS) channels. Properties of the degree distributions, graphical complexity and the number of fundamental cycles in the bipartite graphs are considered via the derivation of information-theoretic bounds. These bounds are expressed in terms of the target block/ bit error probability and the gap (in rate) to capacity. Most of the bounds are general for any decoding algorithm, and some others are proved under belief propagation (BP) decoding. Proving these bounds under a certain decoding algorithm, validates them automatically also under any sub-optimal decoding algorithm. A proper modification of these bounds makes them universal for the set of all MBIOS channels which exhibit a given capacity. Bounds on the degree distributions and graphical complexity apply to finite-length LDPC codes and to the asymptotic case of an infinite block length. The bounds are compared with capacity-approaching LDPC code ensembles under BP decoding, and they are shown to be informative and are easy to calculate. Finally, some interesting open problems are considered.Comment: Published in the IEEE Trans. on Information Theory, vol. 55, no. 7, pp. 2956 - 2990, July 200