Design of Non-Binary Quasi-Cyclic LDPC Codes by ACE Optimization

An algorithm for constructing Tanner graphs of non-binary irregular quasi-cyclic LDPC codes is introduced. It employs a new method for selection of edge labels allowing control over the code's non-binary ACE spectrum and resulting in low error-floor. The efficiency of the algorithm is demonstrated by generating good codes of short to moderate length over small fields, outperforming codes generated by the known methods.Comment: Accepted to 2013 IEEE Information Theory Worksho

Construction of Near-Optimum Burst Erasure Correcting Low-Density Parity-Check Codes

In this paper, a simple, general-purpose and effective tool for the design of low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes for iterative correction of bursts of erasures is presented. The design method consists in starting from the parity-check matrix of an LDPC code and developing an optimized parity-check matrix, with the same performance on the memory-less erasure channel, and suitable also for the iterative correction of single bursts of erasures. The parity-check matrix optimization is performed by an algorithm called pivot searching and swapping (PSS) algorithm, which executes permutations of carefully chosen columns of the parity-check matrix, after a local analysis of particular variable nodes called stopping set pivots. This algorithm can be in principle applied to any LDPC code. If the input parity-check matrix is designed for achieving good performance on the memory-less erasure channel, then the code obtained after the application of the PSS algorithm provides good joint correction of independent erasures and single erasure bursts. Numerical results are provided in order to show the effectiveness of the PSS algorithm when applied to different categories of LDPC codes.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figures. IEEE Trans. on Communications, accepted (submitted in Feb. 2007

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 ℓ. 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

Space-time coding techniques with bit-interleaved coded modulations for MIMO block-fading channels

The space-time bit-interleaved coded modulation (ST-BICM) is an efficient technique to obtain high diversity and coding gain on a block-fading MIMO channel. Its maximum-likelihood (ML) performance is computed under ideal interleaving conditions, which enables a global optimization taking into account channel coding. Thanks to a diversity upperbound derived from the Singleton bound, an appropriate choice of the time dimension of the space-time coding is possible, which maximizes diversity while minimizing complexity. Based on the analysis, an optimized interleaver and a set of linear precoders, called dispersive nucleo algebraic (DNA) precoders are proposed. The proposed precoders have good performance with respect to the state of the art and exist for any number of transmit antennas and any time dimension. With turbo codes, they exhibit a frame error rate which does not increase with frame length.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Trans. on Information Theory, Submission: January 2006 - First review: June 200