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arXiv:0712.2888

Quantum serial turbo-codes

David Poulin, Jean–Pierre Tillich, Ollivier, Harold

Published Dec 18, 2007• 3 citations
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Abstract

We present a theory of quantum serial turbo-codes, describe their iterative decoding algorithm, and study their performances numerically on a depolarization channel. Our construction offers several advantages over quantum LDPC codes. First, the Tanner graph used for decoding is free of 4-cycles that deteriorate the performances of iterative decoding. Secondly, the iterative decoder makes explicit use of the code's degeneracy. Finally, there is complete freedom in the code design in terms of length, rate, memory size, and interleaver choice. We define a quantum analogue of a state diagram that provides an efficient way to verify the properties of a quantum convolutional code, and in particular its recursiveness and the presence of catastrophic error propagation. We prove that all recursive quantum convolutional encoder have catastrophic error propagation. In our constructions, the convolutional codes have thus been chosen to be non-catastrophic and non-recursive. While the resulting families of turbo-codes have bounded minimum distance, from a pragmatic point of view the effective minimum distances of the codes that we have simulated are large enough not to degrade the iterative decoding performance up to reasonable word error rates and block sizes. With well chosen constituent convolutional codes, we observe an important reduction of the word error rate as the code length increases.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.0712.2888

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We present a theory of quantum serial turbo-codes, describe their iterative decoding algorithm, and study their performances numerically on a depolarization channel. Our construction offers several advantages over quantum LDPC codes. First, the Tanner graph used for decoding is free of 4-cycles that deteriorate the performances of iterative decoding. Secondly, the iterative decoder makes explicit use of the code's degeneracy. Finally, there is complete freedom in the code design in terms of length, rate, memory size, and interleaver choice. We define a quantum analogue of a state diagram that provides an efficient way to verify the properties of a quantum convolutional code, and in particular its recursiveness and the presence of catastrophic error propagation. We prove that all recursive quantum convolutional encoder have catastrophic error propagation. In our constructions, the convolutional codes have thus been chosen to be non-catastrophic and non-recursive. While the resulting families of turbo-codes have bounded minimum distance, from a pragmatic point of view the effective minimum distances of the codes that we have simulated are large enough not to degrade the iterative decoding performance up to reasonable word error rates and block sizes. With well chosen constituent convolutional codes, we observe an important reduction of the word error rate as the code length increases.
In this paper, we present a theory of quantum serial turbo codes, describe their iterative decoding algorithm, and study their performances numerically on a depolarization channel. Our construction offers several advantages over quantum low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes. First, the Tanner graph used for decoding is free of 4-cycles that deteriorate the performances of iterative decoding. Second, the iterative decoder makes explicit use of the code's degeneracy. Finally, there is complete freedom in the code design in terms of length, rate, memory size, and interleaver choice. We define a quantum analogue of a state diagram that provides an efficient way to verify the properties of a quantum convolutional code, and in particular, its recursiveness and the presence of catastrophic error propagation. We prove that all recursive quantum convolutional encoders have catastrophic error propagation. In our constructions, the convolutional codes have thus been chosen to be noncatastrophic and nonrecursive. While the resulting families of turbo codes have bounded minimum distance, from a pragmatic point of view, the effective minimum distances of the codes that we have simulated are large enough not to degrade the iterative decoding performance up to reasonable word error rates and block sizes. With well-chosen constituent convolutional codes, we observe an important reduction of the word error rate as the code length increases.
We present a theory of quantum serial turbo-codes and study their performance numerically on a depolarization channel. These codes can be considered as a generalization of classical serial turbo-codes. As their classical cousins, they can be iteratively decoded and with well chosen constituent convolutional codes, we observe an important reduction of the word error rate as the number of encoded qubits increases. Our construction offers several advantages over quantum LDPC codes. First, the Tanner graph used for decoding can be chosen to be free of 4-cycles that deteriorate the performances of iterative decoding. Secondly, the iterative decoder makes explicit use of the code's degeneracy. Finally, there is complete freedom in the code design in terms of length, rate, memory size, and interleaver choice. We address two issues related to the encoding of convolutional codes that are directly relevant for turbo-codes, namely the character of being recursive and non-catastrophic. We define a quantum analogue of a state diagram that provides an efficient way to verify these properties on a given quantum convolutional encoder. Unfortunately, we also prove that all recursive quantum convolutional encoder have catastrophic error propagation. In our constructions, the convolutional codes have thus been chosen to be non-catastrophic and non-recursive. While the resulting families of turbo-codes have bounded minimum distance, from a pragmatic point of view the effective minimum distances of the codes that we have simulated are large enough for not degrading iterative decoding performance up to reasonable word error rates and block sizes.
In the early nineties, the introduction of turbo codes revolutionized classical error correction. The idea was mainly applied on two types of codes: convolutional turbo codes and turbo product codes. The first type of codes was adapted to quantum error correction which initiated the theory of quantum serial turbo codes. In this paper, we present a theory for quantum block turbo codes, the quantum analog of the second type of turbo codes. We describe their iterative decoding algorithm and simulate their performances on a depolarizing channel for different constituent codes.
An unexpected breakdown in the existing theory of quantum serial turbo coding is that a quantum convolutional encoder cannot simultaneously be recursive and non-catastrophic. These properties are essential for quantum turbo code families to have a minimum distance growing with blocklength and for their iterative decoding algorithm to converge, respectively. Here, we show that the entanglement-assisted paradigm simplifies the theory of quantum turbo codes, in the sense that an entanglement-assisted quantum (EAQ) convolutional encoder can possess both of the aforementioned desirable properties. We give several examples of EAQ convolutional encoders that are both recursive and non-catastrophic and detail their relevant parameters. We then modify the quantum turbo decoding algorithm of Poulin , in order to have the constituent decoders pass along only extrinsic information to each other rather than a posteriori probabilities as in the decoder of Poulin , and this leads to a significant improvement in the performance of unassisted quantum turbo codes. Other simulation results indicate that entanglement-assisted turbo codes can operate reliably in a noise regime 4.73 dB beyond that of standard quantum turbo codes, when used on a memoryless depolarizing channel. Furthermore, several of our quantum turbo codes are within 1 dB or less of their hashing limits, so that the performance of quantum turbo codes is now on par with that of classical turbo codes. Finally, we prove that entanglement is the resource that enables a convolutional encoder to be both non-catastrophic and recursive because an encoder acting on only information qubits, classical bits, gauge qubits, and ancilla qubits cannot simultaneously satisfy them.
One of the unexpected breakdowns in the existing theory of quantum serial turbo coding is that a quantum convolutional encoder cannot simultaneously be recursive and non-catastrophic. These properties are essential for a quantum turbo code to have an unbounded minimum distance and for its iterative decoding algorithm to converge, respectively. Here, we show that the entanglement-assisted paradigm gives a theoretical and simulated “turbo boost” to these codes, in the sense that an entanglement-assisted quantum (EAQ) convolutional encoder can possess both of the aforementioned desirable properties, and simulation results indicate that entanglement-assisted turbo codes can operate reliably in a noise regime 5.5 dB beyond that of standard quantum turbo codes. Entanglement is the resource that enables a convolutional encoder to satisfy both properties because an encoder acting on only information qubits, classical bits, gauge qubits, and ancilla qubits cannot simultaneously satisfy them. Simulation results demonstrate that interleaved serial concatenation of EAQ convolutional encoders leads to a powerful code construction with excellent performance on a memoryless depolarizing channel.