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Advances in Mathematics of Communications

Extremal absorbing sets in low-density parity-check codes

Emily McMillon, Allison Beemer, Christine A. Kelley

Published Apr 7, 2021• 3 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Absorbing sets are combinatorial structures in the Tanner graphs of low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes that have been shown to inhibit the high signal-to-noise ratio performance of iterative decoders over many communication channels. Absorbing sets of minimum size are the most likely to cause errors, and thus have been the focus of much research. In this paper, we determine the sizes of absorbing sets that can occur in general and left-regular LDPC code graphs, with emphasis on the range of $ b $ for a given $ a $ for which an $ (a,b) $-absorbing set may exist. We identify certain cases of extremal absorbing sets that are elementary, a particularly harmful class of absorbing sets, and also introduce the notion of minimal absorbing sets which will help in designing absorbing set removal algorithms.

DOI
10.3934/amc.2021003

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Absorbing sets are combinatorial structures in the Tanner graphs of low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes that have been shown to inhibit the high signal-to-noise ratio performance of iterative decoders over many communication channels. Absorbing sets of minimum size are the most likely to cause errors, and thus have been the focus of much research. In this paper, we determine the sizes of absorbing sets that can occur in general and left-regular LDPC code graphs, with emphasis on the range of bbb for a given aaa for which an (a,b)(a,b)(a,b)-absorbing set may exist. We identify certain cases of extremal absorbing sets that are elementary, a particularly harmful class of absorbing sets, and also introduce the notion of minimal absorbing sets which will help in designing absorbing set removal algorithms.
In contrast to the capacity approaching performance of iteratively decoded low-density parity check (LDPC) codes, many practical finite-length LDPC codes exhibit performance degradation, manifested in a so-called error floor. Previous work has linked this phenomenon to the presence of certain combinatorial structures within the Tanner graph representation of the code, termed absorbing sets. Absorbing sets are stable under the bit-flipping operations and have been shown to act as fixed points (¿absorbers¿) for a wider class of iterative decoding algorithms. Codes often possess absorbing sets whose size is smaller than the minimum distance: the smallest absorbing sets are deemed most detrimental culprits behind the error floor. This paper focuses on the elementary combinatorial bounds of the smallest (candidate) absorbing sets. For certain classes of practical codes we demonstrate the tightness of these bounds and show how can the structure of the code and the structure of the absorbing sets be utilized to increase the size of the smallest absorbing sets without compromising other code properties such as the node degrees and the girth. As such, this work provides a step towards a better code design by taking into account the combinatorial nature of fixed points of iterative decoding algorithms.
The error floor phenomenon in many low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes is caused by combinatorial objects in their Tanner graph, known as absorbing sets. In this paper, we highlight a threshold behavior for the min-sum decoding algorithm in the graph of an absorbing set with fixed-point representation of messages. For an absorbing set of interest in a binary LDPC code we can compute the threshold, a novel real-valued parameter that is closely related to its harmfulness. We show that absorbing sets with negative thresholds cannot trap the decoder if the dynamic range of the extrinsic messages is large enough. We also prove that, in regular LDPC codes, absorbing sets with negative thresholds exist if the variable node degree is odd. The examples presented in this paper show that odd-column-weight LDPC codes can have many absorbing sets with negative thresholds, but that these absorbing sets do not trap a well-designed decoder. Simulations show a good agreement between the results of the analysis presented in this paper and the performance of practical decoders with fixed-point messages.
Low density parity check codes (LDPC) are known to perform very well under iterative decoding. However, these codes also exhibit a change in the slope of the bit error rate (BER) vs. signal to noise ratio (SNR) curve in the very low BER region. In our earlier work using hardware emulation in this deep BER regime we argue that this behavior can be attributed to specific structures within the Tanner graph associated with an LDPC code, called absorbing sets. In this paper we provide a detailed theoretical analysis of absorbing sets for array-based LDPC codes Cp.gamma. Specifically, we identify and enumerate all the smallest absorbing sets for these array-based LDPC codes with gamma = 2,3,4 with standard parity check matrix. Experiments carried out on the emulation platform show excellent agreement with our theoretical results.
The class of low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes is attractive, since such codes can be decoded using practical message-passing algorithms, and their performance is known to approach the Shannon limits for suitably large block lengths. For the intermediate block lengths relevant in applications, however, many LDPC codes exhibit a so-called “error floor,” corresponding to a significant flattening in the curve that relates signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) to the bit-error rate (BER) level. Previous work has linked this behavior to combinatorial substructures within the Tanner graph associated with an LDPC code, known as (fully) absorbing sets. These fully absorbing sets correspond to a particular type of near-codewords or trapping sets that are stable under bit-flipping operations, and exert the dominant effect on the low BER behavior of structured LDPC codes. This paper provides a detailed theoretical analysis of these (fully) absorbing sets for the class ofCp,γC_{p, \gamma}Cp,γ​array-based LDPC codes, including the characterization of all minimal (fully) absorbing sets for the array-based LDPC codes forγ=2,3,4\gamma = 2,3,4γ=2,3,4, and moreover, it provides the development of techniques to enumerate them exactly. Theoretical results of this type provide a foundation for predicting and extrapolating the error floor behavior of LDPC codes.
Absorbing sets, a class of combinatorial structures of the Tanner graph representation of a low-density parity-check (LDPC) code, are known to influence the performance of the code under message passing iterative decoding. In this paper, we study the smallest absorbing sets of LDPC codes constructed from projective planes and Euclidean planes. The lower bounds on the parameters of smallest absorbing sets given by Dolecek are proven to be tight for these two families of LDPC codes. We also analyze the combinatorial properties of the smallest absorbing sets and give conditions necessary and sufficient for a set of bit nodes in the Tanner graph to be a smallest absorbing set. For LDPC codes from projective planes, we further give a condition necessary and sufficient for a smallest absorbing set to be a fully absorbing set. In addition, we show that these smallest absorbing sets are asymptotically not stable, which may explain to some extent the good performance as well as the low error floor expectation of these two families of LDPC codes.
Generalized low-density parity-check (GLDPC) codes have outstanding performance outperforming the standard low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes. However, the performance of these codes under iterative decoding can be degraded because of the presence of trapping, absorbing and fully absorbing sets in the code Tanner graphs. The (elementary) trapping and (fully) absorbing sets of protograph-based GLDPC codes are studied. The finite-length and asymptotic distributions of (elementary) trapping and (fully) absorbing sets for protograph-based GLDPC code ensembles are derived and evaluated. The asymptotic distributions can be efficiently computed by solving a system of equations. The relative minimum Δ-trapping/(fully) absorbing set size can be directly computed by adding one equation to the system of equations. This is useful for the code design where we can restrict the search to ensembles for which the minimum Δ-trapping and (fully) absorbing set sizes grow linearly with the blocklength. The normalized logarithmic asymptotic distributions of (elementary) trapping and (fully) absorbing sets for an example GLDPC code ensemble are evaluated.