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IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT)

Memory-efficient decoding of LDPC codes

J.K.-S. Lee, Jeremy Thorpe

Published Jan 1, 2005• 67 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We present a low-complexity quantization scheme for the implementation of regular (3,6) LDPC codes. The quantization parameters are optimized to maximize the mutual information between the source and the quantized messages. Using this non-uniform quantized belief propagation algorithm, we have simulated that an optimized 3-bit quantizer operates with 0.2 dB implementation loss relative to a floating point decoder, and an optimized 4-bit quantizer operates less than 0.1 dB quantization loss

DOI
10.1109/isit.2005.1523376

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We present a low-complexity quantization scheme for the implementation of regular (3,6) LDPC codes. The quantization parameters are optimized to maximize the mutual information between the source and the quantized messages. Using this non-uniform quantized belief propagation algorithm, we have simulated that an optimized 3-bit quantizer operates with 0.2 dB implementation loss relative to a floating point decoder, and an optimized 4-bit quantizer operates less than 0.1 dB quantization loss
Recently, low-resolution LDPC decoders have been introduced that perform mutual information maximizing signal processing. However, the optimal quantization in variable and check nodes requires expensive non-uniform operations. Instead, we propose to use uniform quantization with a simple hardware structure, which reduces the complexity of individual node operations approximately by half and shortens the decoding delay significantly. Our analysis shows that the loss of preserved mutual information resulting from restriction to uniform quantization is very small. Furthermore, the error rate simulations with regular LDPC codes confirm that the uniform quantization causes only minor performance degradation within 0.01 dB compared to the non-uniform alternative. Due to the complexity reduction, especially the proposed 3-bit decoder is a promising candidate to replace 4-bit conventional decoders.
A fast quantized belief propagation algorithm is proposed for decoding low-density parity-check(LDPC) codes. With operations performed by addressing tables, the proposed algorithm takes as operands the indices of labels rather than the quantization levels. The intermediate calculations have been contained in operation tables with much higher precision. The required storage can be significantly reduced by applying the symmetry property while keeping low time complexity. Without the increase in time complexity, it is convenient to realize the decoding with uniform quantization or any nonuniform quantizations that is designed for improving the performance. The time-varying decoder also becomes possible. This algorithm makes it possible to apply LDPC codes to practical systems or to realize fast simulation systems. Some simulation results are also given. The 6?bit logarithmic quantization results in gains of about 0.2?dB relative to the uniform one, approaching to the continuous decoding at low signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) and yielding a loss of about 0.2?dB at high SNRs. Proper quantization of high order can achieve the performance of continuous decoding, and it may be superior to continuous decoding at high SNRs.
A severe problem for mutual information-maximizing lookup table (MIM-LUT) decoding of low-density parity-check (LDPC) code is the high memory cost for using large tables, while decomposing large tables to small tables deteriorates decoding error performance. In this paper, we propose a systematic method, called mutual information- maximizing quantized belief propagation (MIM-QBP) decoding, to remove the lookup tables used for MIM-LUT decoding. Our method leads to a very practical decoder, namely the MIM-QBP decoder, which can be implemented based only on simple mappings and additions. Simulation results show that the proposed MIM-QBP decoder can outperform the state-of-the-art MIM-LUT decoder. Moreover, the MIM-QBP decoder with only 3 bits per message can outperform the floating-point belief propagation (BP) decoder at high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regions with a maximum of 10 iterations.
In this paper, we propose a general framework of the mutual infomration-maximizing (MIM) quantized decoding for low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes, which can outperform the state-of-the-art lookup table (LUT) decoder by using simple mappings and fixed-point additions for the node updates. Our decoding method is generic in the sense that it can be applied to LDPC codes with arbitrary degree distributions, and it can be implemented based on either the belief propagation (BP) algorithm or the min-sum (MS) algorithm, leading to the MIM quantized BP (MIM-QBP) decoder and the MIM quantized MS (MIM-QMS) decoder, respectively. In particular, we approximate the check node (CN) update of the MIM-QBP decoder by a max-product operation and obtain the MIM-QMS decoder, which simplifies the decoder design and requires less resource consumption. To avoid the precision degradation, we introduce a dynamic reconstruction method to optimize the variable node update for different iterations. Some practical aspects of the proposed decoders such as the design and decoding complexity are also discussed. Simulation results show that the MIM-QBP decoder outperforms the LUT decoders in the waterfall region with both 3-bit and 4-bit precision. Moreover, the 4-bit MIM-QMS decoder can even surpass the floating-point BP decoder in the error-floor region.
In this paper, we propose a class of finite alphabet iterative decoder (FAID), called mutual information-maximizing quantized belief propagation (MIM-QBP) decoder, for decoding regular low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes. Our decoder follows the reconstruction-calculation-quantization (RCQ) decoding architecture that is widely used in FAIDs. We present the first complete and systematic design framework for the RCQ parameters, and prove that our design with sufficient precision at node update is able to maximize the mutual information between coded bits and exchanged messages. Simulation results show that the MIM-QBP decoder can always considerably outperform the state-of-the-art mutual information-maximizing FAIDs that adopt two-input single-output lookup tables for decoding. Furthermore, with only 3 bits being used for each exchanged message, the MIM-QBP decoder can outperform the floating-point belief propagation decoder at the high signal-to-noise ratio regions when testing on high-rate LDPC codes with a maximum of 10 and 30 iterations.
LDPC codes have attracted much attention recently for their near-capacity performance and high throughput owing to parallel decoding architectures. While simulations are normally done with floating point computation, any practical implementation (ASIC or FPGA) will be built with fixed-point computation. Obviously, decoder speed will increase, and resource requirements will drop, with low-precision implementations, say 3,4, or 5-bit architectures. In this paper we study the effects of quantization in this regime, using density evolution and decoder simulation. Detailed sum-product decoder implementations are given, and performance losses relative to floating point decoding are given. In particular, 4-bit decoder architectures sustain only 0.1 dB penalty.