In this paper, we analyze the error floor of quasi-cyclic (QC) low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes decoded by the sum-product algorithm (SPA) with row layered message-passing scheduling. For this, we develop a linear state-space model of trapping sets (TSs) which incorporates the layered nature of scheduling. We demonstrate that the contribution of each TS to the error floor is not only a function of the topology of the TS, but also depends on the row layers in which different check nodes of the TS are located. This information, referred to as TS layer profile (TSLP), plays an important role in the harmfulness of a TS. As a result, the harmfulness of a TS in particular, and the error floor of the code in general, can significantly change by changing the order in which the information of different layers, corresponding to different row blocks of the parity-check matrix, is updated. We also study the problem of finding a layer ordering that minimizes the error floor, and obtain row layered decoders with error floor significantly lower than that of their flooding counterparts. As part of our analysis, we make connections between the parameters of the state-space model for a row layered schedule and those of the flooding schedule. Simulation results are presented to show the accuracy of analytical error floor estimates.
In this paper, we analyze the error floor of quasi-cyclic (QC) low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes decoded by the sum-product algorithm (SPA) with row layered message-passing scheduling. For this, we develop a linear state-space model of trapping sets (TSs) which incorporates the layered nature of scheduling. We demonstrate that the contribution of each TS to the error floor is not only a function of the topology of the TS, but also depends on the row layers in which different check nodes of the TS are located. This information, referred to as TS layer profile (TSLP), plays an important role in the harmfulness of a TS. As a result, the harmfulness of a TS in particular, and the error floor of the code in general, can significantly change by changing the order in which the information of different layers, corresponding to different row blocks of the parity-check matrix, is updated. We also study the problem of finding a layer ordering that minimizes the error floor, and obtain row layered decoders with error floor significantly lower than that of their flooding counterparts. As part of our analysis, we make connections between the parameters of the state-space model for a row layered schedule and those of the flooding schedule. Simulation results are presented to show the accuracy of analytical error floor estimates.
In this letter, we analyze the error floor of column layered decoders, also known as shuffled decoders, for low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes under saturating sum-product algorithm (SPA). To estimate the error floor, we evaluate the failure rate of different trapping sets (TSs) that contribute to the frame error rate in the error floor region. For each such TS, we model the dynamics of SPA in the vicinity of the TS by a linear state-space model that incorporates the information of the layered message-passing schedule. Consequently, the model parameters and the failure rate of the TS change as a result of the change in the order by which the messages of different layers are updated. This, in turn, causes the error floor of the code to change as a function of scheduling. Based on the proposed analysis, we then devise an efficient search algorithm to find a schedule that minimizes the error floor. Simulation results are presented to verify the accuracy of the proposed error floor estimation technique.
Finite-length low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes under iterative message passing algorithms suffer from error floor, i.e., as the channel quality improves, at some point, the error rate does not decrease as fast as its initial rate of decrease.The literature on the error floor analysis/estimation of LDPC codes can be, in general, partitioned into two main categories.The first category requires the full knowledge of the parity-check matrix or Tanner graph of the code to estimate the error floor.The second category, on the other hand, is code-independent, in that, rather than the full knowledge of the code's Tanner graph, these techniques only require the multiplicity and topology of harmful substructures of the Tanner graph, referred to as trapping sets (TSs), and possibly the degree distributions of the graph, to estimate the error floor.The proposed techniques in this thesis fit within the second category.The linear state-space model is a well-known code-independent method to estimate the contribution of a trapping set structure to the error floor of low-density paritycheck codes.In this thesis we first provide an in-depth analysis of this method by incorporating a more accurate model for the incoming messages to the TS structure that takes into account the randomness and the correlation among such messages.Based on this analysis, we demonstrate that both randomness and correlation result in the over-estimation of the failure probability of the TS.We then propose an alternate code-independent technique for the error floor estimation of iterative LDPC decoders that can accurately estimate the contribution of different TS structures in the error floor.Compared to the linear state-space model, the proposed method is not only more accurate, but also more general, in that, it is applicable to any saturating iterative message-passing decoder, symmetrically quantized or unquantized, over any memoryless binary-input output-symmetric channel.To the best of our knowledge, all the existing work on the theoretical analysis of error floor is limited to two-phase message passing algorithms, also known as flooding or parallel schedule.There are however a variety of message passing schedules which iii 4.5 The steps of constructing the digraph D l (S) of the (5, 3) LETS for a layered decoder from the flooding digraph D f (S).(The colors (edge types) red (dotted), blue (dashed) and purple (dash-dotted) represent L 1 , L 2 and L 3 , respectively.) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .69 4.6 QC-LDPC codes used for simulations.The entries of the matrices, that are not equal to -1, represent the right circular shift of the identity matrix to create the corresponding block of the parity-check matrix.The -1 entries represent zero blocks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .80 4.7 Simulation and estimation results of C 1 for different saturation levels.The maximum number of iterations I max = 30. . . . . . . . . . . . .81 4.8 The (5, 5) LETS structure of C 1 in which the row layers for different CNs are shown. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .81 4.9 The approximate estimate of the failure probability of the (5, 5) LETS of C 1 for various row layered schedules at E b /N 0 = 6 dB and saturation level 31.75.The schedules are sorted based on r. . . . . . . . . . . .83 4.10 The simulation and estimation results of C 1 for different row schedules.(The saturation level is 31.75, and the maximum number of iterations for layered schedules and the flooding schedule are set to 30 and 60, respectively.) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .83 4.11 The effect of various row layered schedules on the failure probability of different classes of LETSs in C 2 (E b /N 0 = 6 dB, saturation level 15.75).85 4.12 The effect of various row layered schedules on the total FER of C 2 (E b /N 0 = 6 dB, saturation level 15.75). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .85 4.13 The error estimation of the ten (7, 1) LETS groups of C 2 for the two schedules (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) and (4, 1, 5, 2, 3, 6) (saturation level 15.75). .86 4.14 Simulation and estimation results of C 2 for the two schedules (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) and (4, 1, 5, 2, 3, 6) (saturation level 15.75,I max = 30). .87 5.1 A labelled (5,3) LETS of the Tanner (155, 64) code in which the flow of the state variables are shown.The VNs, mis-satisfied CNs and unsatisfied CNs are shown by black circles, white squares and gray squares, respectively.The directed edges related to the layers number 1, 2 and 3 are represented by red, blue and purple colors, respectively.93 xiii 5.2 The VNs v 1 and v 4 related to Fig. 5.1 with the mis-satisfied CN c j connecting them.Figures (a) and (b) are related to virtual VNs, v k and v k , that are used during the update of VNs from layers L 1 and L 3 , respectively.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .99 5.3 Base graph of Example 16: The solid (red), dashed (green), dotted (blue) and dashed-dotted (purple) arrows, respectively, illustrate the updating order which the column layered decoder perform, accordingly.109 5.4 The error estimation related to (5, 5) LETS of C 1 for various column layered schedules at E b /N 0 = 6 dB.All the schedules result in the same dominant eigenvalue of the layered transition matrix, r = 16.9536.The saturation level is 15.75. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .111 5.5 The simulation and estimation results related to code C 1 showing the effect of different schedules.The saturation level is 15.75 and the maximum number of iterations is 30. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .111 5.6 The simulation and estimation results related to code C 2 showing the effect of different schedules.The saturation level is 15.75.The maximum number of iterations is 30. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .113 6.1 The histogram of the conditional error indicator function of a (5, 5) ETS of (640, 192) QC-LDPC code [3] at different iterations. . . . . .128 6.2 Simulation and estimation results for C 1 decoded by SPA over the AWGN channel (I max = 200). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .134 6.3 Simulation and extrapolated estimation results for C 1 decoded by SPA over the AWGN channel (I max = 200).The extrapolated curves are obtained based on the results at E b /N 0 = 4.5 dB . . . . . . . . . . . .136 6.4 Simulation and estimation results for C 2 decoded by SPA over the AWGN channel (I max = 200, C th = 25).The extrapolation in DSLM E is based on the results at E b /N 0 = 2.75 dB. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .136 6.5 Simulation and estimation results for C 3 decoded by SPA over the AWGN channel (I max = 200).The extrapolation in DSLM E is based on the results at E b /N 0 = 4.5 dB. . . . . . . .
The linear state-space model is a well-known code-independent method to estimate the contribution of a trapping set (TS) structure to the error floor of low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes. In this paper, we provide an in-depth analysis of this method by incorporating a more accurate model for the incoming messages to the TS structure that takes into account the randomness and the correlation among such messages. Based on this analysis, we demonstrate that both randomness and correlation result in the over-estimation of the failure probability of the TS. We then propose an alternate code-independent technique for the error floor estimation of iterative LDPC decoders that can accurately estimate the contribution of different TS structures in the error floor. Compared to the linear state-space model, the proposed method is not only more accurate, but also more general, in that, it is applicable to any saturating iterative message-passing decoder, symmetrically quantized or unquantized, over any memoryless binary-input output-symmetric channel. The proposed technique can be viewed as the local application of importance sampling (IS) to the message-passing algorithm over the subgraph induced by the TS in the code's Tanner graph. In the message-passing process, to account for the effect of the rest of the Tanner graph, density evolution along with a simple correlation model is used to generate the messages coming into the TS from the rest of the Tanner graph. Extensive simulations demonstrate that the proposed technique can accurately estimate the error floor of LDPC codes over both additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel and binary symmetric channel (BSC), for a variety of iterative decoding algorithms and quantization schemes.
This thesis explores hardware implementation of low error floor and high speed low-density parity-check (LDPC) decoders.At first, a novel partially-parallel implementation of a protograph-based quasi-cyclic (QC) LDPC decoder, using a new column-layered message-passing schedule is presented.A new design for serial-input check nodes and switch networks, results in lower hardware complexity while having a higher throughput and comparable latency in comparison with all existing partiallyparallel architectures.Thereafter, we introduce a multi-step scheme for the input quantization of message-passing decoders for LDPC codes.The scheme is based on successive requantization and re-decoding of the input blocks that cause the decoder to be trapped in a trapping set, until the decoding is successful or a maximum number of requantization/re-decodings is reached.The proposed scheme, which is applicable to both regular and irregular codes, lowers the error floor significantly at the cost of small increase in complexity, memory and latency.Furthermore, to facilitate the process of code design and performance evaluation in the error floor region, we design a fast and accurate technique to estimate the error floor of variable-regular LDPC codes under quantized iterative decoding algorithms.This technique, which is based on enumerating the dominant elementary trapping sets of the code, provides significant improvement over existing methods in terms of speed and accuracy.Finally, we examine the harmfulness of trapping sets of variable-regular LDPC codes for soft-decision iterative decoding algorithms.We show that, other than the size of a trapping set, the number of unsatisfied check nodes and the trapping set's topological properties, the position of its subgraph in the Tanner graph of the code can also have an effect on its harmfulness.We also examine dominant trapping sets iii of the quantized min-sum (MS) decoding algorithm and two of its variants (offset-MS and MS with successive relaxation (SR)), for both regular and irregular LDPC codes.We show that the distribution of dominant trapping sets of these algorithms is similar for regular codes and different for irregular codes.Based on these results, we evaluate the error floor performance of a decoder, consisting of MS, offset-MS and SR-MS decoding algorithms working in parallel.First, I would like to thank my supervisor, Professor Amir H. Banihashemi for leading and encouraging me during my research.When I started as his M.A.Sc.student nine years ago, my dream was to acquire a set of skills.Amir helped me to achieve them with invaluable advice and excellent guidance.I would also like to thank M. Samy Hosny, the CEO of SiloconPro Inc. for supporting my research and providing me with his professional experience.I can not express my appreciation to my wonderful wife
This paper addresses the prediction of error floors of low-density parity-check codes transmitted over the additive white Gaussian noise channel. Using a linear state-space model to estimate the behavior of the sum-product algorithm (SPA) decoder in the vicinity of trapping sets (TSs), we study the performance of the SPA decoder in the log-likelihood ratio (LLR) domain as a function of the LLR saturation level. When applied to several widely studied codes, the model accurately predicts a significant decrease in the error floor as the saturation level is allowed to increase. For nonsaturating decoders, however, we find that the state-space model breaks down after a small number of iterations due to the strong correlation of LLR messages. We then revisit Richardson's importance-sampling methodology for estimating error floors due to TSs when those floors are too low for Monte Carlo simulation. We propose modifications that account for the behavior of a nonsaturating decoder and present the resulting error floor estimates for the Margulis code. These estimates are much lower, significantly steeper, and more sensitive to iteration count than those previously reported.
In this paper, we propose a novel state-space model to represent the behavior of sum-product algorithm (SPA) in the vicinity of a trapping set (TS) of a low-density parity-check (LDPC) code over the additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel in the error floor region. The proposed model takes into account the non-linear behavior of SPA in the initial iterations using a quadratic approximation, and dynamically adjusts the operating point of the model in accordance to the statistical properties of TS messages. This is in contrast to the existing linear state-space models which linearly approximate the non-linear behavior of SPA at around the operating point of zero in all iterations. Simulation results are provided to demonstrate the higher accuracy of the proposed model in estimating the error floor of LDPC codes compared to the linear state-space model. We also make connections to the semi-analytical code-dependent technique proposed by Richardson for the error floor estimation of LDPC codes, and demonstrate that the proposed state-space model not only is a fully-analytical code-independent counterpart to that method, but also has less complexity and, in some cases, more accuracy.