Algebraic Codes For Error Correction In Digital Communication Systems

Access to the full-text thesis is no longer available at the author's request, due to 3rd party copyright restrictions. Access removed on 29.11.2016 by CS (TIS).Metadata merged with duplicate record (http://hdl.handle.net/10026.1/899) on 20.12.2016 by CS (TIS).C. Shannon presented theoretical conditions under which communication was possible error-free in the presence of noise. Subsequently the notion of using error correcting codes to mitigate the effects of noise in digital transmission was introduced by R. Hamming. Algebraic codes, codes described using powerful tools from algebra took to the fore early on in the search for good error correcting codes. Many classes of algebraic codes now exist and are known to have the best properties of any known classes of codes. An error correcting code can be described by three of its most important properties length, dimension and minimum distance. Given codes with the same length and dimension, one with the largest minimum distance will provide better error correction. As a result the research focuses on finding improved codes with better minimum distances than any known codes. Algebraic geometry codes are obtained from curves. They are a culmination of years of research into algebraic codes and generalise most known algebraic codes. Additionally they have exceptional distance properties as their lengths become arbitrarily large. Algebraic geometry codes are studied in great detail with special attention given to their construction and decoding. The practical performance of these codes is evaluated and compared with previously known codes in different communication channels. Furthermore many new codes that have better minimum distance to the best known codes with the same length and dimension are presented from a generalised construction of algebraic geometry codes. Goppa codes are also an important class of algebraic codes. A construction of binary extended Goppa codes is generalised to codes with nonbinary alphabets and as a result many new codes are found. This construction is shown as an efficient way to extend another well known class of algebraic codes, BCH codes. A generic method of shortening codes whilst increasing the minimum distance is generalised. An analysis of this method reveals a close relationship with methods of extending codes. Some new codes from Goppa codes are found by exploiting this relationship. Finally an extension method for BCH codes is presented and this method is shown be as good as a well known method of extension in certain cases

Advanced channel coding techniques using bit-level soft information

In this dissertation, advanced channel decoding techniques based on bit-level soft information are studied. Two main approaches are proposed: bit-level probabilistic iterative decoding and bit-level algebraic soft-decision (list) decoding (ASD). In the first part of the dissertation, we first study iterative decoding for high density parity check (HDPC) codes. An iterative decoding algorithm, which uses the sum product algorithm (SPA) in conjunction with a binary parity check matrix adapted in each decoding iteration according to the bit-level reliabilities is proposed. In contrast to the common belief that iterative decoding is not suitable for HDPC codes, this bit-level reliability based adaptation procedure is critical to the conver-gence behavior of iterative decoding for HDPC codes and it significantly improves the iterative decoding performance of Reed-Solomon (RS) codes, whose parity check matrices are in general not sparse. We also present another iterative decoding scheme for cyclic codes by randomly shifting the bit-level reliability values in each iteration. The random shift based adaptation can also prevent iterative decoding from getting stuck with a significant complexity reduction compared with the reliability based parity check matrix adaptation and still provides reasonable good performance for short-length cyclic codes. In the second part of the dissertation, we investigate ASD for RS codes using bit-level soft information. In particular, we show that by carefully incorporating bit¬level soft information in the multiplicity assignment and the interpolation step, ASD can significantly outperform conventional hard decision decoding (HDD) for RS codes with a very small amount of complexity, even though the kernel of ASD is operating at the symbol-level. More importantly, the performance of the proposed bit-level ASD can be tightly upper bounded for practical high rate RS codes, which is in general not possible for other popular ASD schemes. Bit-level soft-decision decoding (SDD) serves as an efficient way to exploit the potential gain of many classical codes, and also facilitates the corresponding per-formance analysis. The proposed bit-level SDD schemes are potential and feasible alternatives to conventional symbol-level HDD schemes in many communication sys-tems

Decoding and constructions of codes in rank and Hamming metric

As coding theory plays an important role in data transmission, decoding algorithms for new families of error correction codes are of great interest. This dissertation is dedicated to the decoding algorithms for new families of maximum rank distance (MRD) codes including additive generalized twisted Gabidulin (AGTG) codes and Trombetti-Zhou (TZ) codes, decoding algorithm for Gabidulin codes beyond half the minimum distance and also encoding and decoding algorithms for some new optimal rank metric codes with restrictions. We propose an interpolation-based decoding algorithm to decode AGTG codes where the decoding problem is reduced to the problem of solving a projective polynomial equation of the form q(x) = xqu+1 +bx+a = 0 for a,b ∈ Fqm. We investigate the zeros of q(x) when gcd(u,m)=1 and proposed a deterministic algorithm to solve a linearized polynomial equation which has a close connection to the zeros of q(x). An efficient polynomial-time decoding algorithm is proposed for TZ codes. The interpolation-based decoding approach transforms the decoding problem of TZ codes to the problem of solving a quadratic polynomial equation. Two new communication models are defined and using our models we manage to decode Gabidulin codes beyond half the minimum distance by one unit. Our models also allow us to improve the complexity for decoding GTG and AGTG codes. Besides working on MRD codes, we also work on restricted optimal rank metric codes including symmetric, alternating and Hermitian rank metric codes. Both encoding and decoding algorithms for these optimal families are proposed. In all the decoding algorithms presented in this thesis, the properties of Dickson matrix and the BM algorithm play crucial roles. We also touch two problems in Hamming metric. For the first problem, some cryptographic properties of Welch permutation polynomial are investigated and we use these properties to determine the weight distribution of a binary linear codes with few weights. For the second one, we introduce two new subfamilies for maximum weight spectrum codes with respect to their weight distribution and then we investigate their properties.Doktorgradsavhandlin