164 research outputs found
Decomposition Methods for Large Scale LP Decoding
When binary linear error-correcting codes are used over symmetric channels, a
relaxed version of the maximum likelihood decoding problem can be stated as a
linear program (LP). This LP decoder can be used to decode error-correcting
codes at bit-error-rates comparable to state-of-the-art belief propagation (BP)
decoders, but with significantly stronger theoretical guarantees. However, LP
decoding when implemented with standard LP solvers does not easily scale to the
block lengths of modern error correcting codes. In this paper we draw on
decomposition methods from optimization theory, specifically the Alternating
Directions Method of Multipliers (ADMM), to develop efficient distributed
algorithms for LP decoding.
The key enabling technical result is a "two-slice" characterization of the
geometry of the parity polytope, which is the convex hull of all codewords of a
single parity check code. This new characterization simplifies the
representation of points in the polytope. Using this simplification, we develop
an efficient algorithm for Euclidean norm projection onto the parity polytope.
This projection is required by ADMM and allows us to use LP decoding, with all
its theoretical guarantees, to decode large-scale error correcting codes
efficiently.
We present numerical results for LDPC codes of lengths more than 1000. The
waterfall region of LP decoding is seen to initiate at a slightly higher
signal-to-noise ratio than for sum-product BP, however an error floor is not
observed for LP decoding, which is not the case for BP. Our implementation of
LP decoding using ADMM executes as fast as our baseline sum-product BP decoder,
is fully parallelizable, and can be seen to implement a type of message-passing
with a particularly simple schedule.Comment: 35 pages, 11 figures. An early version of this work appeared at the
49th Annual Allerton Conference, September 2011. This version to appear in
IEEE Transactions on Information Theor
The Effect of Saturation on Belief Propagation Decoding of LDPC Codes
We consider the effect of LLR saturation on belief propagation decoding of
low-density parity-check codes. Saturation occurs universally in practice and
is known to have a significant effect on error floor performance. Our focus is
on threshold analysis and stability of density evolution.
We analyze the decoder for certain low-density parity-check code ensembles
and show that belief propagation decoding generally degrades gracefully with
saturation. Stability of density evolution is, on the other hand, rather
strongly affected by saturation and the asymptotic qualitative effect of
saturation is similar to reduction of variable node degree by one.Comment: Submitted to ISIT. Longer version to be submitted to IT Transactions
in preparatio
From Cages to Trapping Sets and Codewords: A Technique to Derive Tight Upper Bounds on the Minimum Size of Trapping Sets and Minimum Distance of LDPC Codes
Cages, defined as regular graphs with minimum number of nodes for a given
girth, are well-studied in graph theory. Trapping sets are graphical structures
responsible for error floor of low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes, and are
well investigated in coding theory. In this paper, we make connections between
cages and trapping sets. In particular, starting from a cage (or a modified
cage), we construct a trapping set in multiple steps. Based on the connection
between cages and trapping sets, we then use the available results in graph
theory on cages and derive tight upper bounds on the size of the smallest
trapping sets for variable-regular LDPC codes with a given variable degree and
girth. The derived upper bounds in many cases meet the best known lower bounds
and thus provide the actual size of the smallest trapping sets. Considering
that non-zero codewords are a special case of trapping sets, we also derive
tight upper bounds on the minimum weight of such codewords, i.e., the minimum
distance, of variable-regular LDPC codes as a function of variable degree and
girth
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