In this work we propose RELDEC, a novel approach for sequential decoding of moderate length low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes. The main idea behind RELDEC is that an optimized decoding policy is subsequently obtained via reinforcement learning based on a Markov decision process (MDP). In contrast to our previous work, where an agent learns to schedule only a single check node (CN) within a group (cluster) of CNs per iteration, in this work we train the agent to schedule all CNs in a cluster, and all clusters in every iteration. That is, in each learning step of RELDEC an agent learns to schedule CN clusters sequentially depending on a reward associated with the outcome of scheduling a particular cluster. We also modify the state space representation of the MDP, enabling RELDEC to be suitable for larger block length LDPC codes than those studied in our previous work. Furthermore, to address decoding under varying channel conditions, we propose agile meta-RELDEC (AM-RELDEC) that employs meta-reinforcement learning. The proposed RELDEC scheme significantly outperforms standard flooding and random sequential decoding for a variety of LDPC codes, including codes designed for 5G new radio.
In this work we propose RELDEC, a novel approach for sequential decoding of moderate length low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes. The main idea behind RELDEC is that an optimized decoding policy is subsequently obtained via reinforcement learning based on a Markov decision process (MDP). In contrast to our previous work, where an agent learns to schedule only a single check node (CN) within a group (cluster) of CNs per iteration, in this work we train the agent to schedule all CNs in a cluster, and all clusters in every iteration. That is, in each learning step of RELDEC an agent learns to schedule CN clusters sequentially depending on a reward associated with the outcome of scheduling a particular cluster. We also modify the state space representation of the MDP, enabling RELDEC to be suitable for larger block length LDPC codes than those studied in our previous work. Furthermore, to address decoding under varying channel conditions, we propose agile meta-RELDEC (AM-RELDEC) that employs meta-reinforcement learning. The proposed RELDEC scheme significantly outperforms standard flooding and random sequential decoding for a variety of LDPC codes, including codes designed for 5G new radio.
In this work, we consider the sequential decoding of moderate length low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes via reinforcement learning (RL). The sequential decoding scheme is modeled as a Markov decision process (MDP), and an optimized decoding policy is subsequently obtained via RL. In contrast to our previous works, where an agent learns to schedule only a single check node (CN) within a group (cluster) of CNs per iteration, in this work we train the agent to schedule all CNs in a cluster, and all clusters in every iteration. That is, in each RL step, an agent learns to schedule CN clusters sequentially depending on the reward associated with the outcome of scheduling a particular cluster. We also propose a modified MDP and a uniform sequential decoding policy, enabling the RL-based decoder to be suitable for much longer LDPC codes than the ones studied in our previous work. The proposed RL-based decoder exhibits an SNR gain of almost 0.8 dB for fixed bit error probability over the standard flooding approach.
In this work, we consider the decoding of short sparse graph-based channel codes via reinforcement learning (RL). Specifically, we focus on low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes, which for example have been standardized in the context of 5G cellular communication systems due to their excellent error correcting performance. LDPC codes are typically decoded via belief propagation on the corresponding bipartite (Tanner) graph of the code via flooding, i.e., all check and variable nodes in the Tanner graph are updated at once. We model the node-wise sequential LDPC scheduling scheme as a Markov decision process (MDP), and obtain optimized check node (CN) scheduling policies via RL to improve sequential decoding performance as compared to flooding. In each RL step, an agent decides which CN to schedule next by observing a reward associated with each choice. Repeated scheduling enables the agent to discover the optimized CN scheduling policy which is later incorporated in our RL-based sequential LDPC decoder. In order to reduce RL complexity, we propose a novel graph-induced CN clustering approach to partition the state space of the MDP in such a way that dependencies between clusters are minimized. Compared to standard decoding approaches from the literature, some of our proposed RL schemes not only improve the decoding performance, but also reduce the decoding complexity dramatically once the scheduling policy is learned. By concatenating an outer Hamming code with an inner LDPC code which is decoded based on our learned policy, we demonstrate significant improvements in the decoding performance compared to other LDPC decoding policies.
In this work, we propose reinforcement learning (RL) for sequential decoding of moderate length generalized low-density parity-check (GLDPC) codes. Here, sequential decoding refers to scheduling all the generalized constraint nodes (GCNs) and single parity-check nodes (SPCNs) of a GLDPC code serially in each iteration. A GLDPC decoding environment is modeled as a finite Markov decision process (MDP) in which the state-space comprises of all possible sequences of hard-decision values of the variables nodes (VNs) connected to the scheduled GCN or SPCN, and the action-space of the MDP consists of all possible actions (GCN and SPCN scheduling). The goal of RL is to determine an optimized scheduling policy, i.e., one that results in a decoded codeword by minimizing the complexity of the belief propagation (BP) decoder. For training, we consider the proportion of correct bits at the output of the GCN or SPCN as a reward once it is scheduled. The expected rewards for scheduling all the GCNs/SPCNs in the code’s Tanner graph are earned via BP decoding during the RL phase. The proposed RL-based decoding scheme is shown to significantly outperform the standard BP flooding decoder, as well as a sequential decoder in which the GCNs/SPCNs are scheduled randomly.
Belief-propagation (BP) decoding for quantum low-density parity-check (QLDPC) codes is attractive due to its low complexity, but its performance is often limited by short cycles, degeneracy, and convergence failures. Recently, reinforcement-learning-based sequential variable-node (VN) scheduling (RL-S) was shown to improve BP decoding by learning state-dependent update orders. However, the VN-by-VN nature of that approach offers limited within-iteration parallelism, since only one VN is updated at a time. In this paper, we propose a cluster-based extension of RL-S for QLDPC codes. The VNs are partitioned into fixed clusters, and at each scheduling step the RL agent selects one cluster to update, after which all VNs in that cluster are updated in parallel using the same pre-update incoming messages. To keep the tabular state space practical for large cluster sizes, we introduce a permutation-invariant cluster state based on a normalized histogram of local mismatch weights, followed by quantization. This representation makes the number of cluster states depend on the quantization resolution rather than the cluster size. We also develop the corresponding cluster-level Markov decision process, reward function, and Q-learning update. Numerical results on representative QLDPC codes show that the proposed clustered learned scheduling preserves most of the error-rate benefit of VN-level learned sequential scheduling while substantially reducing the number of scheduling decisions per BP iteration, thereby providing an attractive latency-parallelism tradeoff.
We show in this work that reinforcement learning can be successfully applied to decoding short to moderate length sparse graph-based channel codes. Specifically, we focus on low-density parity check (LDPC) codes, which for example have been standardized in the context of 5G cellular communication systems due to their excellent error correcting performance. These codes are typically decoded via belief propagation iterative decoding on the corresponding bipartite (Tanner) graph of the code via flooding, i.e., all check and variable nodes in the Tanner graph are updated at once. In contrast, in this paper we utilize a sequential update policy which selects the optimum check node (CN) scheduling in order to improve decoding performance. In particular, we model the CN update process as a multi-armed bandit process with dependent arms and employ a Q-learning scheme for optimizing the CN scheduling policy. In order to reduce the learning complexity, we propose a novel graph-induced CN clustering approach to partition the state space in such a way that dependencies between clusters are minimized. Our results show that compared to other decoding approaches from the literature, the proposed reinforcement learning scheme not only significantly improves the decoding performance, but also reduces the decoding complexity dramatically once the scheduling policy is learned.
Belief-propagation (BP) decoding for quantum low-density parity-check (QLDPC) codes is appealing due to its low complexity, yet it often exhibits convergence issues due to quantum degeneracy and short cycles that exist in the Tanner graph. To overcome this challenge, this paper proposes a reinforcement-learning (RL) approach that learns (offline) how to decode QLDPC codes based on sequential decoding trajectories. The decoding is formulated as a Markov decision process with a local, syndrome-driven state representation of the underlying RL agent. To enable fast inference, critical for practical implementation, we incrementally update our RL-based QLDPC decoder using second-order neighborhoods that avoid global rescans. Simulation results on representative QLDPC codes demonstrate the superiority of the proposed RL-based QLDPC decoders in terms of performance and convergence speed when compared to flooding and random sequential schedules, while achieving performance competitive with state-of-the-art BP-based decoders at comparable complexity.