Quasi-cyclic LDPC codes of column-weight two using a search algorithm

Copyright © 2007 G. Malema and M. Liebelt. This is an Open Access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attributions License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.This article introduces a search algorithm for constructing quasi-cyclic LDPC codes of column-weight two. To obtain a submatrix structure, rows are divided into groups of equal sizes. Rows in a group are connected in their numerical order to obtain a cyclic structure. Two rows forming a column must be at a specified distance from each other to obtain a given girth. The search for rows satisfying the distance is done sequentially or randomly. Using the proposed algorithm regular and irregular column-weight-two codes are obtained over a wide range of girths, rates, and lengths. The algorithm, which has a complexity linear with respect to the number of rows, provides an easy and fast way to construct quasi-cyclic LDPC codes. Constructed codes show good bit-error rate performance with randomly shifted codes performing better than sequentially shifted ones.Gabofetswe Malema and Michael Liebel