Structured Low-density Parity-check Codes Research Articles

Structured LDPC codes for high-density recording: large girth and low error floor

High-rate low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes are the focus of intense research in magnetic recording because, when decoded by the iterative sum-product algorithm, they show decoding performance close to the Shannon capacity. However, cycles, especially short cycles, are harmful to LDPC codes. The paper describes the partition-and-shift LDPC (PS-LDPC) codes, a new class of regular, structured LDPC codes that can be designed with large girth and arbitrary large minimum distance. Large girth leads to more efficient iterative decoding and codes with better error-floor properties than random LDPC codes. PS-LDPC codes can be designed for any desired column weight and with flexible code rates. The paper details the girth and distance properties of the codes and their systematic construction and presents analytical and simulation performance results that show that, in the high signal-to-noise ratio region, PS-LDPC codes outperform random codes, alleviating the error floor phenomenon.

Iteratively decodable codes on m flats for WDM high-speed long-haul transmission

In an earlier paper, we reported that the low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes from finite planes outperform any other known forward error-correction (FEC) scheme for optical communications. However, the number of different LDPC codes of code rate above 0.8 is rather small. As a natural extension of the prior work, in this paper, we consider LDPC codes on m flats derived from projective and affine geometries, which outperform codes from finite planes. The codes on m flats also provide a greater selection of structured LDPC codes of rate 0.8 or higher. The performance of the codes in a long-haul optical-communication system was assessed using an advanced simulator able to capture all important transmission impairments. Specifically, they achieve a coding gain of 10 dB at a bit error rate (BER) of 10/sup -9/, outperforming, therefore, the best turbo product codes proposed for optical communications. In addition, the simulator implements a fixed-point (FP) iterative decoder that allows control of the precision of the soft information used in the decoder. Such quantization is required to facilitate hardware implementations of the iterative decoder, and the high-speed operations for long-haul optical transmission systems. The loss in performance due to reduced precision of the soft information can be as low as 0.2 dB.

Construction of Low-Density Parity-Check Codes by Superposition

This paper presents a superposition method for constructing low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes. Several classes of structured LDPC codes are constructed. Codes in these classes perform well with iterative decoding, and their Tanner graphs have girth at least six.

Low-density parity-check codes for partial response channels

The goals of this article are twofold: (1) to provide a brief tutorial of the application of low-density parity check (LDPC) codes for partial response (PR) channels under the framework of turbo equalization and (2) to highlight the use of structured LDPC codes in PR systems. We begin by introducing LDPC codes, their graph representations and associated sum-product decoding algorithm, followed by describing the general framework of iterative equalization and decoding approach to combat ISI. We then present explicit constructions of structured LDPC codes, which facilitate efficient implementation of encoding and decoding and show simulation results.