The paper introduces ensembles of accumulate-repeat-accumulate (ARA) codes
which asymptotically achieve capacity on the binary erasure channel (BEC) with
{\em bounded complexity}, per information bit, of encoding and decoding. It
also introduces symmetry properties which play a central role in the
construction of capacity-achieving ensembles for the BEC with bounded
complexity. The results here improve on the tradeoff between performance and
complexity provided by previous constructions of capacity-achieving ensembles
of codes defined on graphs. The superiority of ARA codes with moderate to large
block length is exemplified by computer simulations which compare their
performance with those of previously reported capacity-achieving ensembles of
LDPC and IRA codes. The ARA codes also have the advantage of being systematic.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Trans. on Information Theory, December 1st, 2005.
Includes 50 pages and 13 figure