Relaxation Bounds on the Minimum Pseudo-Weight of Linear Block Codes

Just as the Hamming weight spectrum of a linear block code sheds light on the performance of a maximum likelihood decoder, the pseudo-weight spectrum provides insight into the performance of a linear programming decoder. Using properties of polyhedral cones, we find the pseudo-weight spectrum of some short codes. We also present two general lower bounds on the minimum pseudo-weight. The first bound is based on the column weight of the parity-check matrix. The second bound is computed by solving an optimization problem. In some cases, this bound is more tractable to compute than previously known bounds and thus can be applied to longer codes.Comment: To appear in the proceedings of the 2005 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory, Adelaide, Australia, September 4-9, 200

Coding for Parallel Channels: Gallager Bounds for Binary Linear Codes with Applications to Repeat-Accumulate Codes and Variations

This paper is focused on the performance analysis of binary linear block codes (or ensembles) whose transmission takes place over independent and memoryless parallel channels. New upper bounds on the maximum-likelihood (ML) decoding error probability are derived. These bounds are applied to various ensembles of turbo-like codes, focusing especially on repeat-accumulate codes and their recent variations which possess low encoding and decoding complexity and exhibit remarkable performance under iterative decoding. The framework of the second version of the Duman and Salehi (DS2) bounds is generalized to the case of parallel channels, along with the derivation of their optimized tilting measures. The connection between the generalized DS2 and the 1961 Gallager bounds, addressed by Divsalar and by Sason and Shamai for a single channel, is explored in the case of an arbitrary number of independent parallel channels. The generalization of the DS2 bound for parallel channels enables to re-derive specific bounds which were originally derived by Liu et al. as special cases of the Gallager bound. In the asymptotic case where we let the block length tend to infinity, the new bounds are used to obtain improved inner bounds on the attainable channel regions under ML decoding. The tightness of the new bounds for independent parallel channels is exemplified for structured ensembles of turbo-like codes. The improved bounds with their optimized tilting measures show, irrespectively of the block length of the codes, an improvement over the union bound and other previously reported bounds for independent parallel channels; this improvement is especially pronounced for moderate to large block lengths.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Trans. on Information Theory, June 2006 (57 pages, 9 figures

Analysis of cubic permutation polynomials for turbo codes

Quadratic permutation polynomials (QPPs) have been widely studied and used as interleavers in turbo codes. However, less attention has been given to cubic permutation polynomials (CPPs). This paper proves a theorem which states sufficient and necessary conditions for a cubic permutation polynomial to be a null permutation polynomial. The result is used to reduce the search complexity of CPP interleavers for short lengths (multiples of 8, between 40 and 352), by improving the distance spectrum over the set of polynomials with the largest spreading factor. The comparison with QPP interleavers is made in terms of search complexity and upper bounds of the bit error rate (BER) and frame error rate (FER) for AWGN and for independent fading Rayleigh channels. Cubic permutation polynomials leading to better performance than quadratic permutation polynomials are found for some lengths.Comment: accepted for publication to Wireless Personal Communications (19 pages, 4 figures, 5 tables). The final publication is available at springerlink.co

The Error-Pattern-Correcting Turbo Equalizer

The error-pattern correcting code (EPCC) is incorporated in the design of a turbo equalizer (TE) with aim to correct dominant error events of the inter-symbol interference (ISI) channel at the output of its matching Viterbi detector. By targeting the low Hamming-weight interleaved errors of the outer convolutional code, which are responsible for low Euclidean-weight errors in the Viterbi trellis, the turbo equalizer with an error-pattern correcting code (TE-EPCC) exhibits a much lower bit-error rate (BER) floor compared to the conventional non-precoded TE, especially for high rate applications. A maximum-likelihood upper bound is developed on the BER floor of the TE-EPCC for a generalized two-tap ISI channel, in order to study TE-EPCC's signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) gain for various channel conditions and design parameters. In addition, the SNR gain of the TE-EPCC relative to an existing precoded TE is compared to demonstrate the present TE's superiority for short interleaver lengths and high coding rates.Comment: This work has been submitted to the special issue of the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory titled: "Facets of Coding Theory: from Algorithms to Networks". This work was supported in part by the NSF Theoretical Foundation Grant 0728676