Threshold Analysis of Non-Binary Spatially-Coupled LDPC Codes with Windowed Decoding

In this paper we study the iterative decoding threshold performance of non-binary spatially-coupled low-density parity-check (NB-SC-LDPC) code ensembles for both the binary erasure channel (BEC) and the binary-input additive white Gaussian noise channel (BIAWGNC), with particular emphasis on windowed decoding (WD). We consider both (2,4)-regular and (3,6)-regular NB-SC-LDPC code ensembles constructed using protographs and compute their thresholds using protograph versions of NB density evolution and NB extrinsic information transfer analysis. For these code ensembles, we show that WD of NB-SC-LDPC codes, which provides a significant decrease in latency and complexity compared to decoding across the entire parity-check matrix, results in a negligible decrease in the near-capacity performance for a sufficiently large window size W on both the BEC and the BIAWGNC. Also, we show that NB-SC-LDPC code ensembles exhibit gains in the WD threshold compared to the corresponding block code ensembles decoded across the entire parity-check matrix, and that the gains increase as the finite field size q increases. Moreover, from the viewpoint of decoding complexity, we see that (3,6)-regular NB-SC-LDPC codes are particularly attractive due to the fact that they achieve near-capacity thresholds even for small q and W.Comment: 6 pages, 8 figures; submitted to 2014 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theor

Spatially Coupled Codes and Optical Fiber Communications: An Ideal Match?

In this paper, we highlight the class of spatially coupled codes and discuss their applicability to long-haul and submarine optical communication systems. We first demonstrate how to optimize irregular spatially coupled LDPC codes for their use in optical communications with limited decoding hardware complexity and then present simulation results with an FPGA-based decoder where we show that very low error rates can be achieved and that conventional block-based LDPC codes can be outperformed. In the second part of the paper, we focus on the combination of spatially coupled LDPC codes with different demodulators and detectors, important for future systems with adaptive modulation and for varying channel characteristics. We demonstrate that SC codes can be employed as universal, channel-agnostic coding schemes.Comment: Invited paper to be presented in the special session on "Signal Processing, Coding, and Information Theory for Optical Communications" at IEEE SPAWC 201

Information-Coupled Turbo Codes for LTE Systems

We propose a new class of information-coupled (IC) Turbo codes to improve the transport block (TB) error rate performance for long-term evolution (LTE) systems, while keeping the hybrid automatic repeat request protocol and the Turbo decoder for each code block (CB) unchanged. In the proposed codes, every two consecutive CBs in a TB are coupled together by sharing a few common information bits. We propose a feed-forward and feed-back decoding scheme and a windowed (WD) decoding scheme for decoding the whole TB by exploiting the coupled information between CBs. Both decoding schemes achieve a considerable signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) gain compared to the LTE Turbo codes. We construct the extrinsic information transfer (EXIT) functions for the LTE Turbo codes and our proposed IC Turbo codes from the EXIT functions of underlying convolutional codes. An SNR gain upper bound of our proposed codes over the LTE Turbo codes is derived and calculated by the constructed EXIT charts. Numerical results show that the proposed codes achieve an SNR gain of 0.25 dB to 0.72 dB for various code parameters at a TB error rate level of $10^{-2}$, which complies with the derived SNR gain upper bound.Comment: 13 pages, 12 figure

Spatially-Coupled QDLPC Codes

Spatially-coupled (SC) codes is a class of convolutional LDPC codes that has been well investigated in classical coding theory thanks to their high performance and compatibility with low-latency decoders. We describe toric codes as quantum counterparts of classical two-dimensional spatially-coupled (2D-SC) codes, and introduce spatially-coupled quantum LDPC (SC-QLDPC) codes as a generalization. We use the convolutional structure to represent the parity check matrix of a 2D-SC code as a polynomial in two indeterminates, and derive an algebraic condition that is both necessary and sufficient for a 2D-SC code to be a stabilizer code. This algebraic framework facilitates the construction of new code families. While not the focus of this paper, we note that small memory facilitates physical connectivity of qubits, and it enables local encoding and low-latency windowed decoding. In this paper, we use the algebraic framework to optimize short cycles in the Tanner graph of 2D-SC HGP codes that arise from short cycles in either component code. While prior work focuses on QLDPC codes with rate less than 1/10, we construct 2D-SC HGP codes with small memory, higher rates (about 1/3), and superior thresholds.Comment: 25 pages, 7 figure