A 2.48Gb/s FPGA-based QC-LDPC decoder: An algorithmic compiler implementation

Abstract

The increasing data rates expected to be of the order of Gb/s for future wireless systems directly impact the throughput requirements of the modulation and coding systems of the physical layer. In an effort to design a suitable channel coding solution for 5G wireless systems, in this brief we present two approaches to improve the throughput of a Quasi-Cyclic Low-Density Parity-Check (QC-LDPC) decoder architecture. While providing an algorithmic method to enhance parallel processing within the decoder in the first approach, in the second approach we apply the decoder architecture to achieve another highly-parallel architecture. We have successfully validated the second approach to get a 2.48Gb/s QC-LDPC decoder implementation operating at 200MHz on the Xilinx Kintex-7 FPGA in the NI USRP-2953R. For rapid-prototyping our research findings, the high-level description of the entire decoder was translated to a Hardware Description Language (HDL), namely VHDL, using the algorithmic compiler in the National Instruments LabVIEW™ Communication System Design Suite (CSDS™). As per our knowledge, at the time of writing this paper, this is the fastest FPGA-based implementation of a standard compliant QC-LDPC decoder on a USRP using an algorithmic compiler.