VLSI algorithms and architectures for non-binary-LDPC decoding

Tesis por compendio[EN] This thesis studies the design of low-complexity soft-decision Non-Binary Low-Density Parity-Check (NB-LDPC) decoding algorithms and their corresponding hardware architectures suitable for decoding high-rate codes at high throughput (hundreds of Mbps and Gbps). In the first part of the thesis the main aspects concerning to the NB-LDPC codes are analyzed, including a study of the main bottlenecks of conventional softdecision decoding algorithms (Q-ary Sum of Products (QSPA), Extended Min-Sum (EMS), Min-Max and Trellis-Extended Min-Sum (T-EMS)) and their corresponding hardware architectures. Despite the limitations of T-EMS algorithm (high complexity in the Check Node (CN) processor, wiring congestion due to the high number of exchanged messages between processors and the inability to implement decoders over high-order Galois fields due to the high decoder complexity), it was selected as starting point for this thesis due to its capability to reach high-throughput. Taking into account the identified limitations of the T-EMS algorithm, the second part of the thesis includes six papers with the results of the research made in order to mitigate the T-EMS disadvantages, offering solutions that reduce the area, the latency and increase the throughput compared to previous proposals from literature without sacrificing coding gain. Specifically, five low-complexity decoding algorithms are proposed, which introduce simplifications in different parts of the decoding process. Besides, five complete decoder architectures are designed and implemented on a 90nm Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor (CMOS) technology. The results show an achievement in throughput higher than 1Gbps and an area less than 10 mm2. The increase in throughput is 120% and the reduction in area is 53% compared to previous implementations of T-EMS, for the (837,726) NB-LDPC code over GF(32). The proposed decoders reduce the CN area, latency, wiring between CN and Variable Node (VN) processor and the number of storage elements required in the decoder. Considering that these proposals improve both area and speed, the efficiency parameter (Mbps / Million NAND gates) is increased in almost five times compared to other proposals from literature. The improvements in terms of area allow us to implement NB-LDPC decoders over high-order fields which had not been possible until now due to the highcomplexity of decoders previously proposed in literature. Therefore, we present the first post-place and route report for high-rate codes over high-order fields higher than Galois Field (GF)(32). For example, for the (1536,1344) NB-LDPC code over GF(64) the throughput is 1259Mbps occupying an area of 28.90 mm2. On the other hand, a decoder architecture is implemented on a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) device achieving 630 Mbps for the high-rate (2304,2048) NB-LDPC code over GF(16). To the best knowledge of the author, these results constitute the highest ones presented in literature for similar codes and implemented on the same technologies.[ES] En esta tesis se aborda el estudio del diseño de algoritmos de baja complejidad para la decodificación de códigos de comprobación de paridad de baja densidad no binarios (NB-LDPC) y sus correspondientes arquitecturas apropiadas para decodificar códigos de alta tasa a altas velocidades (cientos de Mbps y Gbps). En la primera parte de la tesis los principales aspectos concernientes a los códigos NB-LDPC son analizados, incluyendo un estudio de los principales cuellos de botella presentes en los algoritmos de decodificación convencionales basados en decisión blanda (QSPA, EMS, Min-Max y T-EMS) y sus correspondientes arquitecturas hardware. A pesar de las limitaciones del algoritmo T-EMS (alta complejidad en el procesador del nodo de chequeo de paridad (CN), congestión en el rutado debido al intercambio de mensajes entre procesadores y la incapacidad de implementar decodificadores para campos de Galois de orden elevado debido a la elevada complejidad), éste fue seleccionado como punto de partida para esta tesis debido a su capacidad para alcanzar altas velocidades. Tomando en cuenta las limitaciones identificadas en el algoritmo T-EMS, la segunda parte de la tesis incluye seis artículos con los resultados de la investigación realizada con la finalidad de mitigar las desventajas del algoritmo T-EMS, ofreciendo soluciones que reducen el área, la latencia e incrementando la velocidad comparado con propuestas previas de la literatura sin sacrificar la ganancia de codificación. Especificamente, cinco algoritmos de decodificación de baja complejidad han sido propuestos, introduciendo simplificaciones en diferentes partes del proceso de decodificación. Además, arquitecturas completas de decodificadores han sido diseñadas e implementadas en una tecnologia CMOS de 90nm consiguiéndose una velocidad mayor a 1Gbps con un área menor a 10 mm2, aumentando la velocidad en 120% y reduciendo el área en 53% comparado con previas implementaciones del algoritmo T-EMS para el código (837,726) implementado sobre campo de Galois GF(32). Las arquitecturas propuestas reducen el área del CN, latencia, número de mensajes intercambiados entre el nodo de comprobación de paridad (CN) y el nodo variable (VN) y el número de elementos de almacenamiento en el decodificador. Considerando que estas propuestas mejoran tanto el área comola velocidad, el parámetro de eficiencia (Mbps / Millones de puertas NAND) se ha incrementado en casi cinco veces comparado con otras propuestas de la literatura. Las mejoras en términos de área nos ha permitido implementar decodificadores NBLDPC sobre campos de Galois de orden elevado, lo cual no habia sido posible hasta ahora debido a la alta complejidad de los decodificadores anteriormente propuestos en la literatura. Por lo tanto, en esta tesis se presentan los primeros resultados incluyendo el emplazamiento y rutado para códigos de alta tasa sobre campos finitos de orden mayor a GF(32). Por ejemplo, para el código (1536,1344) sobre GF(64) la velocidad es 1259 Mbps ocupando un área de 28.90 mm2. Por otro lado, una arquitectura de decodificador ha sido implementada en un dispositivo FPGA consiguiendo 660 Mbps de velocidad para el código de alta tasa (2304,2048) sobre GF(16). Estos resultados constituyen, según el mejor conocimiento del autor, los mayores presentados en la literatura para códigos similares implementados para las mismas tecnologías.[CA] En esta tesi s'aborda l'estudi del disseny d'algoritmes de baixa complexitat per a la descodificació de codis de comprovació de paritat de baixa densitat no binaris (NB-LDPC), i les seues corresponents arquitectures per a descodificar codis d'alta taxa a altes velocitats (centenars de Mbps i Gbps). En la primera part de la tesi els principals aspectes concernent als codis NBLDPC són analitzats, incloent un estudi dels principals colls de botella presents en els algoritmes de descodificació convencionals basats en decisió blana (QSPA, EMS, Min-Max i T-EMS) i les seues corresponents arquitectures. A pesar de les limitacions de l'algoritme T-EMS (alta complexitat en el processador del node de revisió de paritat (CN), congestió en el rutat a causa de l'intercanvi de missatges entre processadors i la incapacitat d'implementar descodificadors per a camps de Galois d'orde elevat a causa de l'elevada complexitat), este va ser seleccionat com a punt de partida per a esta tesi degut a la seua capacitat per a aconseguir altes velocitats. Tenint en compte les limitacions identificades en l'algoritme T-EMS, la segona part de la tesi inclou sis articles amb els resultats de la investigació realitzada amb la finalitat de mitigar els desavantatges de l'algoritme T-EMS, oferint solucions que redueixen l'àrea, la latència i incrementant la velocitat comparat amb propostes prèvies de la literatura sense sacrificar el guany de codificació. Específicament, s'han proposat cinc algoritmes de descodificació de baixa complexitat, introduint simplificacions en diferents parts del procés de descodificació. A més, s'han dissenyat arquitectures completes de descodificadors i s'han implementat en una tecnologia CMOS de 90nm aconseguint-se una velocitat major a 1Gbps amb una àrea menor a 10 mm2, augmentant la velocitat en 120% i reduint l'àrea en 53% comparat amb prèvies implementacions de l'algoritme T-EMS per al codi (837,726) implementat sobre camp de Galois GF(32). Les arquitectures proposades redueixen l'àrea del CN, la latència, el nombre de missatges intercanviats entre el node de comprovació de paritat (CN) i el node variable (VN) i el nombre d'elements d'emmagatzemament en el descodificador. Considerant que estes propostes milloren tant l'àrea com la velocitat, el paràmetre d'eficiència (Mbps / Milions deportes NAND) s'ha incrementat en quasi cinc vegades comparat amb altres propostes de la literatura. Les millores en termes d'àrea ens ha permès implementar descodificadors NBLDPC sobre camps de Galois d'orde elevat, la qual cosa no havia sigut possible fins ara a causa de l'alta complexitat dels descodificadors anteriorment proposats en la literatura. Per tant, nosaltres presentem els primers reports després de l'emplaçament i rutat per a codis d'alta taxa sobre camps finits d'orde major a GF(32). Per exemple, per al codi (1536,1344) sobre GF(64) la velocitat és 1259 Mbps ocupant una àrea de 28.90 mm2. D'altra banda, una arquitectura de descodificador ha sigut implementada en un dispositiu FPGA aconseguint 660 Mbps de velocitat per al codi d'alta taxa (2304,2048) sobre GF(16). Estos resultats constitueixen, per al millor coneixement de l'autor, els millors presentats en la literatura per a codis semblants implementats per a les mateixes tecnologies.Lacruz Jucht, JO. (2016). VLSI algorithms and architectures for non-binary-LDPC decoding [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/73266TESISCompendi

Reduction of Complexity for Nonbinary LDPC Decoders With Compressed Messages

© 2015 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.In this brief, a method for compressing the messages between check nodes and variable nodes is proposed. This method is named compressed nonbinary message passing (CNBMP). CNBMP reduces the number of messages exchanged between one check node and the connected variable nodes from d(c) x q to 5 x q, and its application has a high impact on the performance of the decoder: the storage and routing areas are reduced and the throughput is increased. Unlike other methods, CNBMP does not introduce any approximation or modification in the information and the processed operations are exactly the same as those of the original decoders; hence, no performance degradation is introduced. To demonstrate its advantages, an architecture applying this CNBMP to the Trellis Min-Max algorithm was derived showing that most of the storage resources were also reduced from dc x q to 5 x q. This architecture was implemented for a (837 726) nonbinary low-density parity-check code using a 90-nm CMOS technology reaching a throughput of 981 Mb/s with an area of 10.67 mm(2), which is 3.9 more efficient than the best solution found in the literature.This work was supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion under Grant TEC2011-27916. The work of F. Garcia-Herrero was supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Educacion through Formacion de Profesorado Universitario (FPU) under Grant AP2010-5178.Lacruz Jucht, JO.; García Herrero, FM.; Valls Coquillat, J. (2015). Reduction of Complexity for Nonbinary LDPC Decoders With Compressed Messages. IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems. 23(11):2676-2679. https://doi.org/10.1109/TVLSI.2014.2377194S26762679231

One minimum only trellis decoder for non-binary low-density parity-check codes

© 2015 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.A one minimum only decoder for Trellis-EMS (OMO T-EMS) and for Trellis-Min-max (OMO T-MM) is proposed in this paper. In this novel approach, we avoid computing the second minimum in messages of the check node processor, and propose efficient estimators to infer the second minimum value. By doing so, we greatly reduce the complexity and at the same time improve latency and throughput of the derived architectures compared to the existing implementations of EMS and Min-max decoders. This solution has been applied to various NB-LDPC codes constructed over different Galois fields and with different degree distributions showing in all cases negligible performance loss compared to the ideal EMS and Min-max algorithms. In addition, two complete decoders for OMO T-EMS and OMO T-MM were implemented for the (837,726) NB-LDPC code over GF(32) for comparison proposals. A 90 nm CMOS process was applied, achieving a throughput of 711 Mbps and 818 Mbps respectively at a clock frequency of 250 MHz, with an area of 19.02 ${rm mm}^{2}$ and 16.10 ${rm mm}^{2}$ after place and route. To the best knowledge of the authors, the proposed decoders have higher throughput and area-time efficiency than any other solution for high-rate NB-LDPC codes with high Galois field order.This work was supported in part by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion under Grant TEC2011-27916 and in part by the Universitat Politecnica de Valencia under Grant PAID-06-2012-SP20120625. The work of F. Garcia-Herrero was supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Educacion under Grant AP2010-5178. David Declercq has been funded by the Institut Universitaire de France for this project. This paper was recommended by Associate Editor Z. Zhang.Lacruz, JO.; García Herrero, FM.; Valls Coquillat, J.; Declercq, D. (2015). One minimum only trellis decoder for non-binary low-density parity-check codes. IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I: Regular Papers. 62(1):177-184. https://doi.org/10.1109/TCSI.2014.2354753S17718462

Simplified trellis min-max decoder architecture for nonbinary low-density parity-check codes

© 2015 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.Nonbinary low-density parity-check (NB-LDPC) codes have become an efficient alternative to their binary counterparts in different scenarios, such as moderate codeword lengths, high-order modulations, and burst error correction. Unfortunately, the complexity of NB-LDPC decoders is still too high for practical applications, especially for the check node (CN) processing, which limits the maximum achievable throughput. Although a great effort has been made in the recent literature to overcome this disadvantage, the proposed decoders are still not ready for high-speed implementations for high-order fields. In this paper, a simplified trellis min max algorithm is proposed, where the CN messages are computed in a parallel way using only the most reliable information. The proposed CN algorithm is implemented using a horizontal layered schedule. The overall decoder architecture has been implemented in a 90-nm CMOS process for a ((N=837) and (K=726)) NB-LDPC code over GF(32), achieving a throughput of 660 Mb/s at nine iterations based on postlayout results. This decoder increases hardware efficiency compared with the existing recent solutions for the same code.This work was supported in part by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion under Grant TEC2011-27916; in part by the Universitat Politecnica de Valencia, Gandia, Spain, under Grant PAID-06-2012-SP20120625; and in part by the Institut Universitaire de France, Rennes, France. The work of F. Garcia-Herrero was supported in part by the Spanish Ministerio de Educacion under Grant AP2010-5178 and in part by the Institute Universitaire de France.Lacruz Jucht, JO.; García Herrero, FM.; Declercq, D.; Valls Coquillat, J. (2015). Simplified trellis min-max decoder architecture for nonbinary low-density parity-check codes. IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems. 23(9):1783-1792. https://doi.org/10.1109/TVLSI.2014.2344113S1783179223

Decodificador de códigos LDPC no binarios basado en el algoritmo T-EMS

[EN] In this work a non-binary LDPC decoder based on T-EMS algorithm is proposed. A full parallel architecture of the check node has been implemented and a layered schedule is used for the decoder. The proposed decoder has been implemented in a FPGA and 90nm ASIC using a NB-LDPC (837,723) over finite field GF(32). The results show that the proposed decoder achieves higher throughput [Mbps] and less latency than the ones of decoders proposed in literature.[ES] En este trabajo se propone la implementación de un decodificador de códigos LDPC no binarios basado en el algoritmo T-EMS. Se ha implementado una arquitectura totalmente paralela en el nodo de comprobación de paridad y un esquema de actualización por capas el decodificador. El decodificador propuesto ha sido implementado en un dispositivo FPGA y en un ASIC en tecnologia de 90 nm utilizando un código NB-LDPC (837,723) sobre campo finito GF(32). Los resultados obtenidos demuestran que el decodificador propuesto tiene mayor velocidad de procesamiento de datos [Mbps] y menor latencia que los ultimos decodificadores propuestos en la literatura. (español)Lacruz Jucht, JO. (2013). Decodificador de códigos LDPC no binarios basado en el algoritmo T-EMS. Universitat Politècnica de València. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/44567Archivo delegad

A 630 Mbps non-binary decoder for FPGA

A high-speed non-binary LDPC decoder based on Trellis Min-Max algorithm with layered schedule is presented. The proposed approach compresses the check-node output messages into a reduced set, decreasing the number of messages sent to the variable node. Additionally, the memory resources from the layered architecture are reduced. The proposed decoder was implemented for the (2304,2048) NB-LDPC code over GF(16) on a Virtex-7 FPGA and in a 90 nm CMOS process. Our implementation outperforms state-of-the-art NB-LDPC decoder implementations for both technologies, achieving a throughput of 630 and 965 Mbps, respectively.This work was supported in part by the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia under Grant PAID-06-2012-SP20120625, in part by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación under Grant TEC2011-27916 and in part by the Generalitat Valenciana under Grant GV/2014/011.Lacruz Jucht, JO.; García Herrero, FM.; Canet Subiela, MJ.; Valls Coquillat, J.; Pérez Pascual, MA. (2015). A 630 Mbps non-binary decoder for FPGA. IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/ISCAS.2015.7169065