458 research outputs found
Codes for Asymmetric Limited-Magnitude Errors With Application to Multilevel Flash Memories
Several physical effects that limit the reliability and performance of multilevel flash memories induce errors that have low magnitudes and are dominantly asymmetric. This paper studies block codes for asymmetric limited-magnitude errors over q-ary channels. We propose code constructions and bounds for such channels when the number of errors is bounded by t and the error magnitudes are bounded by â. The constructions utilize known codes for symmetric errors, over small alphabets, to protect large-alphabet symbols from asymmetric limited-magnitude errors. The encoding and decoding of these codes are performed over the small alphabet whose size depends only on the maximum error magnitude and is independent of the alphabet size of the outer code. Moreover, the size of the codes is shown to exceed the sizes of known codes (for related error models), and asymptotic rate-optimality results are proved. Extensions of the construction are proposed to accommodate variations on the error model and to include systematic codes as a benefit to practical implementation
Increasing Flash Memory Lifetime by Dynamic Voltage Allocation for Constant Mutual Information
The read channel in Flash memory systems degrades over time because the
Fowler-Nordheim tunneling used to apply charge to the floating gate eventually
compromises the integrity of the cell because of tunnel oxide degradation.
While degradation is commonly measured in the number of program/erase cycles
experienced by a cell, the degradation is proportional to the number of
electrons forced into the floating gate and later released by the erasing
process. By managing the amount of charge written to the floating gate to
maintain a constant read-channel mutual information, Flash lifetime can be
extended. This paper proposes an overall system approach based on information
theory to extend the lifetime of a flash memory device. Using the instantaneous
storage capacity of a noisy flash memory channel, our approach allocates the
read voltage of flash cell dynamically as it wears out gradually over time. A
practical estimation of the instantaneous capacity is also proposed based on
soft information via multiple reads of the memory cells.Comment: 5 pages. 5 figure
New Constructions of Codes for Asymmetric Channels via Concatenation
We present new constructions of codes for asymmetric channels for both binary and nonbinary alphabets, based on methods of generalized code concatenation. For the binary asymmetric channel, our methods construct nonlinear single-error-correcting codes from ternary outer codes. We show that some of the Varshamov-Tenengol'ts-Constantin-Rao codes, a class of binary nonlinear codes for this channel, have a nice structure when viewed as ternary codes. In many cases, our ternary construction yields even better codes. For the nonbinary asymmetric channel, our methods construct linear codes for many lengths and distances which are superior to the linear codes of the same length capable of correcting the same number of symmetric errors
Correcting Charge-Constrained Errors in the Rank-Modulation Scheme
We investigate error-correcting codes for a the
rank-modulation scheme with an application to flash memory
devices. In this scheme, a set of n cells stores information in the
permutation induced by the different charge levels of the individual
cells. The resulting scheme eliminates the need for discrete
cell levels, overcomes overshoot errors when programming cells (a
serious problem that reduces the writing speed), and mitigates the
problem of asymmetric errors. In this paper, we study the properties
of error-correcting codes for charge-constrained errors in the
rank-modulation scheme. In this error model the number of errors
corresponds to the minimal number of adjacent transpositions required
to change a given stored permutation to another erroneous
oneâa distance measure known as Kendallâs Ï-distance.We show
bounds on the size of such codes, and use metric-embedding techniques
to give constructions which translate a wealth of knowledge
of codes in the Lee metric to codes over permutations in Kendallâs
Ï-metric. Specifically, the one-error-correcting codes we construct
are at least half the ball-packing upper bound
Constructions of Rank Modulation Codes
Rank modulation is a way of encoding information to correct errors in flash
memory devices as well as impulse noise in transmission lines. Modeling rank
modulation involves construction of packings of the space of permutations
equipped with the Kendall tau distance.
We present several general constructions of codes in permutations that cover
a broad range of code parameters. In particular, we show a number of ways in
which conventional error-correcting codes can be modified to correct errors in
the Kendall space. Codes that we construct afford simple encoding and decoding
algorithms of essentially the same complexity as required to correct errors in
the Hamming metric. For instance, from binary BCH codes we obtain codes
correcting Kendall errors in memory cells that support the order of
messages, for any constant We also construct
families of codes that correct a number of errors that grows with at
varying rates, from to . One of our constructions
gives rise to a family of rank modulation codes for which the trade-off between
the number of messages and the number of correctable Kendall errors approaches
the optimal scaling rate. Finally, we list a number of possibilities for
constructing codes of finite length, and give examples of rank modulation codes
with specific parameters.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Transactions on Information Theor
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