Construction of Irregular Protograph-Based QC-LDPC Codes With Low Error Floor

Abstract

In this article, we design finite-length irregular protograph-based quasi-cyclic (QC) low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes with good waterfall performance and low error floor. To achieve a low error floor, we eliminate a targeted set of dominant elementary trapping sets (ETS) ${\mathcal{ L}}$ in the Tanner graph of the code. For a given rate and girth, the codes are designed to be free of the largest set of problematic ETSs for a given block length, or to have the shortest block length while a given set of ETSs is avoided. The design is based on a search algorithm that identifies whether any instance of any structure within ${\mathcal{ L}}$ exists in the Tanner graph of the constructed code or not. The search algorithm performs this task with minimal complexity, making it feasible to construct practical codes by running the search algorithm a large number of times. Simulation results are provided to demonstrate the superior performance of designed codes compared to similar state-of-the-art irregular QC-LDPC codes.