Quantum stabilizer codes (QSCs) suffer from a low quantum coding rate since they have to recover the quantum bits (qubits) in the face of both bit-flip and phase-flip errors. In this treatise, we conceive a low-complexity concatenated quantum turbo code (QTC) design exhibiting a high quantum coding rate. The high quantum coding rate is achieved by combining the quantum-domain version of short-block codes (SBCs) also known as single parity check (SPC) codes as the outer codes and quantum unity-rate codes (QURCs) as the inner codes. Despite its design simplicity, the proposed QTC yields a near-hashing-bound error correction performance. For instance, compared to the best half-rate QTC known in the literature, namely the QIrCC-QURC scheme, which operates at the distance of D = 0.037 from the quantum hashing bound, our novel QSBC-QURC scheme can operate at the distance of D = 0.029. In addition, it is worth mentioning that this is the first instantiation of QTCs capable of adjusting the quantum encoders according to the quantum coding rate required for mitigating the Pauli errors, given the different depolarizing probabilities of the quantum channel.
Quantum stabilizer codes (QSCs) suffer from a low quantum coding rate since they have to recover the quantum bits (qubits) in the face of both bit-flip and phase-flip errors. In this treatise, we conceive a low-complexity concatenated quantum turbo code (QTC) design exhibiting a high quantum coding rate. The high quantum coding rate is achieved by combining the quantum-domain version of short-block codes (SBCs) also known as single parity check (SPC) codes as the outer codes and quantum unity-rate codes (QURCs) as the inner codes. Despite its design simplicity, the proposed QTC yields a near-hashing-bound error correction performance. For instance, compared to the best half-rate QTC known in the literature, namely the QIrCC-QURC scheme, which operates at the distance of D = 0.037 from the quantum hashing bound, our novel QSBC-QURC scheme can operate at the distance of D = 0.029. In addition, it is worth mentioning that this is the first instantiation of QTCs capable of adjusting the quantum encoders according to the quantum coding rate required for mitigating the Pauli errors, given the different depolarizing probabilities of the quantum channel.
We propose a novel quantum turbo short-block code, which subsumes multiple-rate quantum short-block codes (MR-QSBCs) as the outer codes and a quantum unity-rate code (QURC) as the inner code. The proposed design is denoted as MR-QSBC-QURC. More specifically, the proposed design exhibits multiple quantum coding rates despite relying only on a single quantum encoder. Moreover, the flexibility offered by the single-encoder MR-QSBCs enables us to leverage extrinsic information transfer (EXIT)-chart based heuristic optimization for determining the optimal weighting in the fractional encoding of MR-QSBCs. Our simulation results show that the MR-QSBC-QURC scheme conceived performs relatively close to the ultimate limit of the quantum hashing bound. Specifically, when considering the target quantum coding rates of$r_{Q} = \lbrace 0.3, 0.4, 0.5, 0.6, 0.7 \rbrace ,theMR−QSBC−QURCoperatesatadistanceofD = \lbrace 0.042, 0.029, 0.030, 0.024, 0.017 \rbrace $from the quantum hashing bound, respectively, at a quantum bit error ratio (QBER) of 10−3.
Powerful quantum error correction codes (QECCs) are required for stabilizing and protecting fragile qubits against the undesirable effects of quantum decoherence. Similar to classical codes, hashing bound approaching QECCs may be designed by exploiting a concatenated code structure, which invokes iterative decoding. Therefore, in this paper, we provide an extensive step-by-step tutorial for designing extrinsic information transfer (EXIT) chart-aided concatenated quantum codes based on the underlying quantum-to-classical isomorphism. These design lessons are then exemplified in the context of our proposed quantum irregular convolutional code (QIRCC), which constitutes the outer component of a concatenated quantum code. The proposed QIRCC can be dynamically adapted to match any given inner code using EXIT charts, hence achieving a performance close to the hashing bound. It is demonstrated that our QIRCC-based optimized design is capable of operating within 0.4 dB of the noise limit.
The employment of quantum error correction codes (QECCs) within quantum computers potentially offers a reliability improvement for both quantum computation and communications tasks. However, the laws of quantum mechanics prevent us from directly invoking the mature family of classical error correction codes in the quantum domain. In order to circumvent the associated problems, the notion of quantum stabilizer codes (QSCs) was proposed in conjunction with syndrome-based decoding in the quantum regime. However, most of the powerful QSC schemes require long codewords for achieving a high performance, which potentially imposes additional challenges for implementation concerning their implementation, since their decoding may require longer than the quantum circuit's coherence time. Hence at the time of writing, QSCs exhibiting short to moderate codeword lengths are preferable. We commence by describing the pivotal problem encountered by classical error-correction codes, which also emerges when designing the QSCs, namely the intrinsic trade-off between the minimum distance versus coding rate. The complete formulation of this particular trade-off does not exist, but several lower and upper bounds can be found in the literature. It has been shown that a substantial gap can be observed between the upper and lower bound of the minimum distance, given the codeword length and the quantum coding rate. Hence, we propose an appealingly simple and invertible analytical approximation, for characterizing the trade-off between the quantum coding rate and the minimum distance of QSCs as well as their corresponding quantum bit error rate (QBER) performance upper-bound. For example, for a half-rate QSC having a codeword length of n = 128, the minimum distance is bounded by 11 < d < 22, while our approximation yields a minimum distance of d = 17 for the above-mentioned code. Next, we link this parametric study of the minimum distance versus quantum coding rate to the popular QSCs, namely to the family of quantum topological error correction codes (QTECCs). In order to construct the classical-to-quantum isomorphism, we conceive and investigate the family of classical topological error correction codes (TECCs), assuming that the bits of a codeword can be arranged in a lattice structure. We then present the classical-to-quantum isomorphism to pave the way for constructing their dual pairs in the quantum domain, which are the QTECCs. Finally, we characterize the performance of QTECCs in the face of the quantum depolarizing channel in terms of both their QBER and fidelity. Specifically, we demonstrate that for quantum coding rate rQ ~ 0, the threshold probability of the QBER below which the colour, rotated-surface, surface, and toric codes become capable of improving the uncoded QBER are given by 1.8 ×10-2, 1.3 ×10-2, 6.3 ×10-2 and 6.8 ×10-2, respectively. Furthermore, we also demonstrate that we can achieve beneficial fidelity improvements above the minimum fidelity of 0.94, 0.97 and 0.99 by employing the rQ = 1/7 colour code, the rQ = 1/9 rotated-surface code, and the rQ = 1/13 surface code, respectively. However, QSCs require additional quantum gates for their employment. Incorporating more quantum gates for performing error correction potentially introduces further sources of quantum decoherence into quantum computers. In this scenario, the primary challenge is to find the sufficient condition required by each of the quantum gates for beneficially employing QECCs in order to yield reliability improvements, given that the quantum gates utilized by the QECCs also introduce quantum decoherence. In this treatise, we approach this problem by firstly presenting the general framework of protecting quantum gates by the amalgamation of the transversal configuration of quantum gates and QSCs, which can be viewed as syndrome-based QECCs. Secondly, we provide examples of the advocated framework by invoking QTECCs for protecting both transversal Hadamard gates and controlled (CNOT) gates. Both our simulation and analytical results explicitly show that by utilizing QTECCs, the fidelity of the quantum gates can be beneficially improved, provided that quantum gates satisfying a certain minimum depolarization fidelity threshold (Fth) are available. For instance, for protecting transversal Hadamard gates, the minimum fidelity values required for each of the gates in order to attain fidelity improvements are 99.74%, 99.73%, 99.87%, and 99.86%, when they are protected by colour, rotated-surface, surface, and toric codes, respectively. Unfortunately, these specific Fth values can only be obtained for a very large number of physical qubits (n → ∞), when the quantum coding rate of the QTECCs approaches zero (rQ → 0). Finally, in order to conceive QSCs exhibiting a high quantum coding rate, we modify the construction of QTECCs for conceiving a low-complexity concatenated quantum turbocode (QTC). The above-mentioned high quantum coding rate is obtained by combining the quantum-domain version of short-block codes (SBCs) also known as single parity-check (SPC) codes as the outer codes and quantum unity-rate codes (QURCs) as the inner codes. Despite its design simplicity, the proposed QTC yields a near-hashing-bound error correction performance. For instance, compared to the best half-rate QTC known in the literature, namely the quantum irregular convolutional codes (QIrCCs) combined with the QURC scheme, which operates at the distance of D = 0.037 from the quantum hashing bound, our novel QSBC-QURC scheme can operate at the lower distance of D = 0:029. It is also worth mentioning that this is the first instantiation of QTCs capable of adjusting the quantum encoders according to the quantum coding rate required for mitigating the Pauli errors imposed by the time-variant depolarizing probabilities of the quantum channel.
Inspired by the success of classical turbo codes, quantum turbo codes (QTCs) have also been conceived for near-hashing-bound transmission of quantum information over memoryless quantum channels. However, in real physical situations, the memoryless channel assumption may not be well justified, since the channel often exhibits memory of previous error events. Here, we investigate the performance of QTCs over depolarizing channels exhibiting memory and we show that they suffer from a performance degradation at low depolarizing probability values. In order to circumvent the performance degradation issue, we conceive a new coding scheme termed quantum turbo coding scheme exploiting error-correlation (QTC-EEC) that is capable of utilizing the error-correlation while performing the iterative decoding at the receiver. The proposed QTC-EEC can achieve convergence threshold at a higher depolarizing probability for channels with a higher value of correlation parameter and achieve performance near to the capacity. Finally, we propose a joint decoding and estimation scheme for our QTC-EEC relying on the correlation estimation (QTC-EEC-E) designed for more realistic quantum systems with unknown correlation parameter. Simulation results reveal that the proposed QTC-EEC-E can achieve the same performance as that of the ideal system of known correlation parameter and hence demonstrate the accurate estimation of the proposed QTC-EEC-E.
Quantum turbo codes (QTCs) are known to operate close to the achievable Hashing bound. However, the sequential nature of the conventional quantum turbo decoding algorithm imposes a high decoding latency, which increases linearly with the frame length. This posses a potential threat to quantum systems having short coherence times. In this context, we conceive a fully-parallel quantum turbo decoder (FPQTD), which eliminates the inherent time dependences of the conventional decoder by executing all the associated processes concurrently. Due to its parallel nature, the proposed FPQTD reduces the decoding times by several orders of magnitude, while maintaining the same performance. We have also demonstrated the significance of employing an odd-even interleaver design in conjunction with the proposed FPQTD. More specifically, it is shown that an odd-even interleaver reduces the computational complexity by 50%, without compromising the achievable performance.
Quantum parallel processing techniques are capable of solving certain complex problems at a substantially lower complexity than their classical counterparts. From the perspective of telecommunications, this quantum-domain parallel processing provides a plausible solution for achieving full-search based multi-stream detection, which is vital for future gigabit-wireless systems. The peculiar laws of quantum mechanics have also spurred interest in the absolutely secure quantum-based communication systems. Unfortunately, quantum decoherence imposes a hitherto insurmountable impairment on the practical implementation of quantum computation as well as on quantum communication systems, which may be overcome with the aid of efficient error correction codes. In this thesis, we design error correction codes for the quantum domain, which is an intricate journey from the realm of classical channel coding theory to that of the Quantum Error Correction Codes (QECCs). Since quantum-based communication systems are capable of supporting the transmission of both classical and quantum information, we initially focus our attention on the code design for entanglementassisted classical communication over the quantum depolarizing channel. We conceive an Extrinsic Information Transfer (EXIT) chart aided near-capacity classical-quantum code design, which invokes a classical Irregular Convolutional Code (IRCC) and a Unity Rate Code (URC) in conjunction with our proposed soft-decision aided SuperDense Code (SD). Hence, it is referred to as an ‘IRCC-URCSD’ arrangement. The proposed scheme is intrinsically amalgamated both with 2-qubit as well as 3-qubit SD coding protocols and it is benchmarked against the corresponding entanglement-assisted classical capacity. Since the IRCC-URC-SD scheme is a bit-based design, it incurs a capacity loss. As a further advance, we design a symbol based concatenated code design, referred to as a symbol-based ‘CC-URC-SD’, which relies on a single-component classical Convolutional Code (CC). Additionally, for the sake of reducing the associated decoding complexity, we also investigate the impact of the constraint length of the convolutional code on the achievable performance. Our initial designs, namely IRCC-URC-SD and CC-URC-SD, exploit redundancy in the classical domain. By contrast, QECCs relying on the quantum-domain redundancy are indispensable for conceiving a quantum communication system supporting the transmission of quantum information and also for quantum computing. Therefore, we next provide insights into the transformation from the family of classical codes to the class of quantum codes known as ‘Quantum Stabilizer Codes’ (QSC), which invoke the classical syndrome decoding. Particularly, we detail the underlying quantum-to classical isomorphism, which facilitates the design of meritorious families of QECCs from the known classical codes. We further study the syndrome decoding techniques operating over classical channels, which may be exploited for decoding QSCs. In this context, we conceive a syndrome-based block decoding approach for the classical Turbo Trellis Coded Modulation (TTCM), whose performance is investigated for transmission over an Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) channel as well as over an uncorrelated Rayleigh fading channel. Pursuing our objective of designing efficient QECCs, we next consider the construction of Hashingbound-approaching concatenated quantum codes. In this quest, we appropriately adapt the conventional non-binary EXIT charts for Quantum Turbo Codes (QTCs) by exploiting the intrinsic quantumto- classical isomorphism. We further demonstrate the explicit benefit of our EXIT-chart technique for achieving a Hashing-bound-approaching code design. We also propose a generically applicable structure for Quantum Irregular Convolutional Codes (QIRCCs), which can be dynamically adapted to a specific application scenario with the aid of the EXIT charts. More explicitly, we provide a detailed design example by constructing a 10-subcode QIRCC and use it as an outer code in a concatenated quantum code structure for evaluating its performance. Working further in the direction of iterative code structures, we survey Quantum Low Density Parity Check (QLPDC) codes from the perspective of code design as well as in terms of their decoding algorithms. Furthermore, we propose a radically new class of high-rate row-circulant Quasi-Cyclic QLDPC (QC-QLDPC) codes, which can be constructed from arbitrary row-circulant classical QC LDPC matrices. We also conceive a modified non-binary decoding algorithm for homogeneous Calderbank-Shor-Steane (CSS)-type QLDPC codes, which is capable of alleviating the problems imposed by the unavoidable length-4 cycles. Our modified decoder outperforms the state-of-the-art decoders in terms of their Word Error Rate (WER) performance, despite imposing a reduced decoding complexity. Finally, we intricately amalgamate our modified decoder with the classic Uniformly-ReWeighted Belief Propagation (URW-BP) for the sake of achieving further performance improvement.