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arXiv:1111.0711 · IEEE Transactions on Information Theory

Hierarchical and High-Girth QC LDPC Codes

Yige Wang, Stark Christiaan Draper, Jonathan S. Yedidia

Published Mar 20, 2013• 51 citations
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Abstract

We present an approach to designing capacity-approaching high-girth low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes that are friendly to hardware implementation, and compatible with some desired input code structure defined using a protograph. The approach is based on a mapping of any class of codes defined using a protograph into a family of hierarchical quasi-cyclic (HQC) LDPC codes. Whereas the parity check matrices of standard quasi-cyclic (QC) LDPC codes are composed of circulant submatrices, those of HQC LDPC codes are composed of a hierarchy of circulant submatrices that are, in turn, constructed from circulant submatrices, and so on, through some number of levels. Next, we present a girth-maximizing algorithm that optimizes the degrees of freedom within the family of codes to yield a high-girth HQC LDPC code, subject to bounds imposed by the fact that HQC codes are still quasi-cyclic. Finally, we discuss how certain characteristics of a code protograph will lead to inevitable short cycles and show that these short cycles can be eliminated using a “squashing” procedure that results in a high-girth QC LDPC code, although not a hierarchical one. We illustrate our approach with three design examples of QC LDPC codes-two girth-10 codes of rates 1/3 and 0.45 and one girth-8 code of rate 0.7-all of which are obtained from protographs of one-sided spatially coupled codes.

DOI
10.1109/tit.2013.2253512

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arXiv:1407.5364•Jul 21, 2014•1 citation
We present an approach to designing capacity-approaching high-girth low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes that are friendly to hardware implementation, and compatible with some desired input code structure defined using a protograph. The approach is based on a mapping of any class of codes defined using a protograph into a family of hierarchical quasi-cyclic (HQC) LDPC codes. Whereas the parity check matrices of standard quasi-cyclic (QC) LDPC codes are composed of circulant submatrices, those of HQC LDPC codes are composed of a hierarchy of circulant submatrices that are, in turn, constructed from circulant submatrices, and so on, through some number of levels. Next, we present a girth-maximizing algorithm that optimizes the degrees of freedom within the family of codes to yield a high-girth HQC LDPC code, subject to bounds imposed by the fact that HQC codes are still quasi-cyclic. Finally, we discuss how certain characteristics of a code protograph will lead to inevitable short cycles and show that these short cycles can be eliminated using a “squashing” procedure that results in a high-girth QC LDPC code, although not a hierarchical one. We illustrate our approach with three design examples of QC LDPC codes-two girth-10 codes of rates 1/3 and 0.45 and one girth-8 code of rate 0.7-all of which are obtained from protographs of one-sided spatially coupled codes.
We present an approach to designing capacityapproaching high-girth low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes that are friendly to hardware implementation, and compatible with some desired input code structure defined using a protograph. The approach is based on a mapping of any class of codes defined using a protograph into a family of hierarchical quasicyclic (HQC) LDPC codes. Whereas the parity check matrices of standard quasi-cyclic (QC) LDPC codes are composed of circulant sub-matrices, those of HQC LDPC codes are composed of a hierarchy of circulant sub-matrices that are in turn constructed from circulant sub-matrices, and so on, through some number of levels. Next, we present a girth-maximizing algorithm that optimizes the degrees of freedom within the family of codes to yield a high-girth HQC LDPC code, subject to bounds imposed by the fact that that HQC codes are still quasi-cyclic. Finally, we discuss how certain characteristics of a code protograph will lead to inevitable short cycles, and show that these short cycles can be eliminated using a squashing procedure that results in a high-girth QC LDPC code, although not a hierarchical one. We illustrate our approach with three design examples of QC LDPC codes two girth-10 codes of rates 1/3 and 0.45 and one girth-8 code of rate 0.7 all of which are obtained from protographs of one-sided spatially-coupled codes.
Quasi-Cyclic (QC) low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes are a class of LDPC codes with a simple construction facilitating hardware implementation while achieving excellent performance. In this paper, we introduce an algorithm that constructs QC spatially-coupled (SC) LDPC codes with large girth while keeping the constraint length small. The algorithm offers a "protograph to basegraph" construction, focusing on finding small lifting sizes of QC codes while avoiding short cycles. This work extends the hierarchical quasi-cyclic (HQC) construction for block LDPC codes proposed by Wang et al. to the spatially coupled case. The construction is based on the cycle relevant matrix (CRM) derived from the periodic structure of time-invariant SC-LDPC codes. Numerical results show that the proposed algorithm effectively achieves the target girth with a small lifting factor, enabling low-complexity SC code construction.
A significant amount of the analysis of protograph-based low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes has been devoted to the subclass of quasi-cyclic (QC) LDPC codes. Despite their implementation advantages and algebraic properties that make them easy to analyze, protograph-based QC-LDPC codes have undesirable fixed upper limits on important code parameters. This implies that picking a QC code from an asymptotically good or capacity approaching ensemble is suboptimal, since long QC codes will not perform close to the ensemble asymptotic limits. Indeed, these limits can only be achieved by codes that are not QC. In this paper we present an overview together with some new results on partially-QC protograph-based LDPC codes, i.e., LDPC codes whose parity-check matrix is partially composed of circulant submatrices. We perform both a minimum Hamming distance and girth analysis of these codes. Moreover, we present explicit partially-QC LDPC code constructions with parameters that exceed the restricted QC upper bounds.
A quasi-cyclic (QC) low-density parity-check (LDPC) code can be viewed as the protograph code with circulant permutation matrices (or circulants). In this correspondence, we find all the subgraph patterns of protographs of QC LDPC codes having inevitable cycles of length 2i, i = 6, 7, 8, 9,10, i.e., the cycles that always exist regardless of the shift values of circulants. It is also derived that if the girth of the protograph is 2g, g > 2, its protograph code cannot have the inevitable cycles of length smaller than 6g. Based on these subgraph patterns, we propose new combinatorial construction methods of the protographs, whose protograph codes can have girth larger than or equal to 14 or 18. We also propose a couple of shift value assigning rules for circulants of a QC LDPC code guaranteeing the girth 14.
Quasi-cyclic low-density parity-check (QC-LDPC) codes based on protographs are of great interest to code designers because analysis and implementation are facilitated by the protograph structure and the use of circulant permutation matrices for protograph lifting. However, these restrictions impose undesirable fixed upper limits on important code parameters, such as minimum distance and girth. In this paper, we consider an approach to constructing QC-LDPC codes that uses a two-step lifting procedure based on a protograph, and, by following this method instead of the usual one-step procedure, we obtain improved minimum distance and girth properties. We also present two new design rules for constructing good QC-LDPC codes using this two-step lifting procedure, and in each case, we obtain a significant increase in minimum distance and achieve a certain guaranteed girth compared with one-step circulant-based liftings. The expected performance improvement is verified by simulation results.
Quasi-cyclic low-density parity-check (QC-LDPC) codes based on protographs are of great interest to code designers because analysis and implementation are facilitated by the protograph structure and the use of circulant permutation matrices for protograph lifting. However, these restrictions impose undesirable fixed upper limits on important code parameters, such as minimum distance and girth. In this paper, we consider an approach to constructing QC-LDPC codes that uses a two-step lifting procedure based on a protograph, and, by following this method instead of the usual one-step procedure, we obtain improved minimum distance and girth properties. We also present two new design rules for constructing good QC-LDPC codes using this two-step lifting procedure, and in each case we obtain a significant increase in minimum distance and achieve a certain guaranteed girth compared to one-step circulant-based liftings. The expected performance improvement is verified by simulation results.