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Information Theory and Applications Workshop (ITA)

Approaching capacity with asymptotically regular LDPC codes

Michael Lentmaier, Gerhard Paul Fettweis, Kamil Sh. Zigangirov, Daniel J. Costello

Published Feb 1, 2009• 94 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We present a family of protograph based LDPC codes that can be derived from permutation matrix based regular (J,K) LDPC convolutional codes by termination. In the terminated protograph, all variable nodes still have degree J but some check nodes at the start and end of the protograph have degrees smaller than K. Since the fraction of these stronger nodes vanishes as the termination length L increases, we call the codes asymptotically regular. The density evolution thresholds of these protographs are better than those of regular (J, K) block codes. Interestingly, this threshold improvement gets stronger with increasing node degrees (at a fixed rate) and it does not decay as L increases. Terminated convolutional protographs can also be derived from standard irregular protographs and may exhibit a significant threshold improvement.

DOI
10.1109/ita.2009.5044941

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We present a family of protograph based LDPC codes that can be derived from permutation matrix based regular (J,K) LDPC convolutional codes by termination. In the terminated protograph, all variable nodes still have degree J but some check nodes at the start and end of the protograph have degrees smaller than K. Since the fraction of these stronger nodes vanishes as the termination length L increases, we call the codes asymptotically regular. The density evolution thresholds of these protographs are better than those of regular (J, K) block codes. Interestingly, this threshold improvement gets stronger with increasing node degrees (at a fixed rate) and it does not decay as L increases. Terminated convolutional protographs can also be derived from standard irregular protographs and may exhibit a significant threshold improvement.
Families of asymptotically regular LDPC block code ensembles can be formed by terminating (J, K)-regular protograph-based LDPC convolutional codes. By varying the termination length, we obtain a large selection of LDPC block code ensembles with varying code rates and substantially better iterative decoding thresholds than those of (J, K)-regular LDPC block code ensembles, despite the fact that the terminated ensembles are almost regular. Also, by means of an asymptotic weight enumerator analysis, we show that minimum distance grows linearly with block length for all of the ensembles in these families, i.e., the ensembles are asymptotically good. We find that, as the termination length increases, families of ¿asymptotically regular¿ codes with capacity approaching iterative decoding thresholds and declining minimum distance growth rates are obtained, allowing a code designer to trade-off between distance growth rate and threshold. Further, we show that the thresholds and the distance growth rates can be improved by carefully choosing the component protographs used in the code construction.
Families of asymptotically regular LDPC block code ensembles can be formed by terminating (J, K)-regular protograph-based LDPC convolutional codes. By varying the termination length, we obtain a large selection of LDPC block code ensembles with varying code rates, minimum distance that grows linearly with block length, and capacity approaching iterative decoding thresholds, despite the fact that the terminated ensembles are almost regular. In this paper, we investigate the properties of the quasi-cyclic (QC) members of such an ensemble. We show that an upper bound on the minimum Hamming distance of members of the QC sub-ensemble can be improved by careful choice of the component protographs used in the code construction. Further, we show that the upper bound on the minimum distance can be improved by using arrays of circulants in a graph cover of the protograph.
In this paper, we present a method of constructing new families of LDPC block code ensembles formed by terminating irregular protograph-based LDPC convolutional codes. Using the accumulate-repeat-by-4-jagged-accumulate (AR4JA) protograph as an example, a density evolution analysis for the binary erasure channel shows that this flexible design technique gives rise to a large selection of LDPC block code ensembles with varying code rates and thresholds close to capacity. Further, by means of an asymptotic weight enumerator analysis, we show that all the ensembles in this family also have minimum distance that grows linearly with block length, i.e., they are asymptotically good.
It has previously been shown that ensembles of terminated protograph-based low-density parity-check (LDPC) convolutional codes have a typical minimum distance that grows linearly with block length and that they are capable of achieving capacity approaching iterative decoding thresholds on the binary erasure channel (BEC). In this paper, we review a recent result that the dramatic threshold improvement obtained by terminating LDPC convolutional codes extends to the additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel. Also, using a (3,6)-regular protograph-based LDPC convolutional code ensemble as an example, we perform an asymptotic trapping set analysis of terminated LDPC convolutional code ensembles. In addition to capacity approaching iterative decoding thresholds and linearly growing minimum distance, we find that the smallest non-empty trapping set of a terminated ensemble grows linearly with block length.
The bit-error threshold of the standard ensemble of Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) codes is known to be close to capacity, if there is a non-zero fraction of degree-two bit nodes. However, the degree-two bit nodes preclude the possibility of a block-error threshold. Interestingly, LDPC codes constructed using protographs allow the possibility of having both degree-two bit nodes and a block-error threshold. In this paper, we analyze density evolution for protograph LDPC codes over the binary erasure channel and show that their bit-error probability decreases double exponentially with the number of iterations when the erasure probability is below the bit-error threshold and long chain of degree-two variable nodes are avoided in the protograph. We present deterministic constructions of such protograph LDPC codes with girth logarithmic in blocklength, resulting in an exponential fall in bit-error probability below the threshold. We provide optimized protographs, whose block-error thresholds are better than that of the standard ensemble with minimum bit-node degree three. These protograph LDPC codes are theoretically of great interest, and have applications, for instance, in coding with strong secrecy over wiretap channels.
We propose several LDPC code constructions that simultaneously achieve good threshold and error floor performance. Minimum distance is shown to grow linearly with block size (similar to regular codes of variable degree at least 3) by considering ensemble average weight enumerators. Our constructions are based on projected graph, or protograph, structures that support high-speed decoder implementations. As with irregular ensembles, our constructions are sensitive to the proportion of degree-2 variable nodes. A code with too few such nodes tends to have an iterative decoding threshold that is far from the capacity threshold. A code with too many such nodes tends to not exhibit a minimum distance that grows linearly in block length. In this paper we also show that preceding can be used to lower the threshold of regular LDPC codes. The decoding thresholds of the proposed codes, which have linearly increasing minimum distance in block size, outperform that of regular LDPC codes. Furthermore, a family of low to high rate codes, with thresholds that adhere closely to their respective channel capacity thresholds, is presented. Simulation results for a few example codes show that the proposed codes have low error floors as well as good threshold SNR performance.