VLSI-based decoding of geometric low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes using the sum-product or min-sum algorithms is known to be very difficult due to large memory requirement and high interconnection complexity caused by high variable and column degrees. In this paper, a low-complexity high-performance algorithm is introduced for decoding of such high-weight LDPC codes. The developed soft-bit-flipping (SBF) algorithm operates in a similar way to the bit-flipping (BF) algorithm but further utilizes reliability of estimates to improve error performance. A hybrid decoding scheme comprised of the BF and SBF algorithms is also proposed to shorten the decoding time. Parallel and pipelined VLSI architecture is developed to increase the throughput without consuming much chip area. The (1057, 813) and (273, 191) projective-geometry LDPC codes are used for performance evaluation, and the former is designed in VLSI.
VLSI-based decoding of geometric low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes using the sum-product or min-sum algorithms is known to be very difficult due to large memory requirement and high interconnection complexity caused by high variable and column degrees. In this paper, a low-complexity high-performance algorithm is introduced for decoding of such high-weight LDPC codes. The developed soft-bit-flipping (SBF) algorithm operates in a similar way to the bit-flipping (BF) algorithm but further utilizes reliability of estimates to improve error performance. A hybrid decoding scheme comprised of the BF and SBF algorithms is also proposed to shorten the decoding time. Parallel and pipelined VLSI architecture is developed to increase the throughput without consuming much chip area. The (1057, 813) and (273, 191) projective-geometry LDPC codes are used for performance evaluation, and the former is designed in VLSI.
A high-performance low-complexity decoding algorithm for LDPC codes is proposed in this paper, which has the advantages of both bit-flipping (BF) algorithm and sum-product algorithm (SPA). The proposed soft bit-flipping algorithm requires only simple comparison and addition operations for computing the messages between bit and check nodes, and the amount of those operations is also small. By increasing the utilization ratio of the computed messages and by adopting nonuniform quantization, the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) gap to the SPA is reduced to 0.4dB at the frame error rate of 10-4 with only 5-bit assignment for quantization. LDPC codes with high column or row weights, which are not suitable for the SPA decoding due to the complexity, can be practically implemented without much worsening the error performance.
After the introduction of iterative coding, Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) codes have received a lot of attention due to their remarkable near Shannon-limit performance and practical decoder implementation. However, when employing an LDPC code for various applications, multiple issues do arise at the simulation, algorithm and implementation levels. The first issue is the performance evaluation of the iterative LDPC decoder in the very low Bit Error Rate (BER) regions. So far, no analytical tool has been developed to evaluate the performance of LDPC codes. Unfortunately standard Monte Carlo (MC) simulations cannot be used for performance estimation in these low BER regions due to prohibitive execution times. The second issue is the efficiency of the decoding algorithm. Due to the presence of short cycles in the bipartite graph, sum-product decoding algorithms lead to considerable performance loss for short block-length LDPC codes and produce error floors for longer codes. In addition, the iterative processing and estimation of soft probabilistic values with these algorithms result in very high computational complexity, which in turn impedes the adoption of LDPC codes for power constrained systems. Another prime objective is to design a high throughput decoder architecture which is capable of supporting multiple rates and variable code lengths within minimal area.
This work aims to address and provide solutions to the above problems. As a solution to the performance estimation problem of LDPC codes, a highly efficient and novel fast BER simulation technique is developed. At the algorithm level, a performance improvement and error floor avoidance method is introduced, and a computationally efficient algorithm is developed for the sum-product decoding of LDPC codes. And finally, at the architecture level, a high throughput multi-rate variable code length implementation is presented which, when implemented, efficiently minimizes device resources while alleviating the routing complexity of the decoder.
Layered decoding is well appreciated in low-density parity-check (LDPC) decoder implementation since it can achieve effectively high decoding throughput with low computation complexity. This work, for the first time, addresses low-complexity column-layered decoding schemes and very-large-scale integration (VLSI) architectures for multi-Gb/s applications. At first, the min-sum algorithm is incorporated into the column-layered decoding. Then algorithmic transformations and judicious approximations are explored to minimise the overall computation complexity. Compared to the original column-layered decoding, the new approach can reduce the computation complexity in check node processing for high-rate LDPC codes by up to 90% while maintaining the fast convergence speed of layered decoding. Furthermore, a relaxed pipelining scheme is presented to enable very high clock speed for VLSI implementation. Equipped with these new techniques, an efficient decoder architecture for quasi-cyclic LDPC codes is developed and implemented with 0.13 µm VLSI implementation technology. It is shown that a decoding throughput of nearly 4 Gb/s at a maximum of 10 iterations can be achieved for a (4096, 3584) LDPC code. Hence, this work has facilitated practical applications of column-layered decoding and particularly made it very attractive in high-speed, high-rate LDPC decoder implementation.
Based on decoding performance, complexity and latency of finite-geometry low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes, an efficient decoding algorithm is proposed. The algorithm is a hybrid bit-flipping (BF)/majority-logic (MLG) algorithm. In the algorithm, there are two stages. At the first stage, a code is decoded with bit-flipping (BF) with a small fixed number of iterations. Then the output from bit-flipping (BF) decoder is decoded by majority-logic (MLG) decoding. And in bit-flipping (BF) decoding, a new method is used to find the least reliable position. In the hybrid algorithm, there aren't real operations. Simulation results show that the algorithm provides 0.3dB coding gain over weight bit-flipping (WBF) decoding, and within 1 dB away from sum-product algorithm (SPA) decoding.
A novel bit-flipping (BF) algorithm with low complexity for high-throughput decoding of low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes is presented. At each iteration, a novel threshold pattern is used to determine the code bits whether to be flipped or not, and the flipping error probability is effectively decreased. Compared with the weighted BF algorithm and its modifications, the modified BF algorithm has significantly lower complexity and decoding time. Through simulations the proposed BF algorithm is shown to achieve excellent performance and fast convergence speed while maintaining significantly low complexity thus facilitating high-throughput decoding.
This thesis is focused on the design and implementation of binary low-density parity-check (LDPC) code decoders for high-speed modern communication systems. The basic of LDPC codes and the performance and bottlenecks, in terms of complexity and hardware efficiency, of the main soft-decision and hard-decision decoding algorithms (such as Min-Sum, Optimized 2-bit Min-Sum and Reliability-based iterative Majority-Logic) are analyzed. The complexity and performance of those algorithms are improved to allow efficient hardware architectures.\n\nA new decoding algorithm called One-Minimum Min-Sum is proposed. It reduces considerably the complexity of the check node update equations of the Min-Sum algorithm. The second minimum is estimated from the first minimum value by a means of a linear approximation that allows a dynamic adjustment. The Optimized 2-bit Min-Sum algorithm is modified to initialize it with the complete LLR values and to introduce the extrinsic information in the messages sent from the variable nodes. Its variable node equation is reformulated to reduce its complexity. Both algorithms were tested for the (2048,1723) RS-based LDPC code and (16129,15372) LDPC code using an FPGA-based hardware emulator. They exhibit BER performance very close to Min-Sum algorithm and do not introduce early error-floor. \n\nIn order to show the hardware advantages of the proposed algorithms, hardware decoders were implemented in a 90 nm CMOS process and FPGA devices based on two types of architectures: full-parallel and partial-parallel one with horizontal layered schedule. The results show that the decoders are more area-time efficient than other published decoders and that the low-complexity of the Modified Optimized 2-bit Min-Sum allows the implementation of 10 Gbps decoders in current FPGA devices. \n\nFinally, a new hard-decision decoding algorithm, the Historical-Extrinsic Reliability-Based Iterative Decoder, is presented. This algorithm introduces the new idea of considering hard-decision votes as soft-decision to compute the extrinsic information of previous iterations. It is suitable for high-rate codes and improves the BER performance of the previous RBI-MLGD algorithms, with similar complexity.