Belief propagation (BP) decoding has been recognized for its capacity-approaching performance and high throughput when decoding long low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes. However, the application of BP decoding for short codes is hindered by dense parity-check matrices (PCMs) and prevalent short cycles in the Tanner graph. In this paper, we introduce a general method to extract an optimized sparse PCM for short binary block codes, which removes length-four cycles and enhances the connectivity of short cycles to enable BP decoding with improved performance. Notably, for short binary codes with lengths up to 64, our BP decoding performance approaches the maximum likelihood bound and surpasses the best-reported BP results with reduced computational complexity. Compared with other universal decoding algorithms, BP decoding using our extracted sparse PCMs is competitive in terms of both error-rate performance and computational complexity. These promising results suggest that our method to improve BP decoding for short codes is a step toward a practical universal BP decoder for next-generation communication systems.
Belief propagation (BP) decoding has been recognized for its capacity-approaching performance and high throughput when decoding long low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes. However, the application of BP decoding for short codes is hindered by dense parity-check matrices (PCMs) and prevalent short cycles in the Tanner graph. In this paper, we introduce a general method to extract an optimized sparse PCM for short binary block codes, which removes length-four cycles and enhances the connectivity of short cycles to enable BP decoding with improved performance. Notably, for short binary codes with lengths up to 64, our BP decoding performance approaches the maximum likelihood bound and surpasses the best-reported BP results with reduced computational complexity. Compared with other universal decoding algorithms, BP decoding using our extracted sparse PCMs is competitive in terms of both error-rate performance and computational complexity. These promising results suggest that our method to improve BP decoding for short codes is a step toward a practical universal BP decoder for next-generation communication systems.
As successfully adopted in standard long code scenarios, belief propagation (BP) decoding has been considered a promising universal decoding candidate for next-generation wireless communications. However, when applied to short codes, BP decoding suffers from poor error correction performance due to harmful cycle structures in the Tanner graph. In this paper, we address this issue by designing a structured, sparse parity-check matrix (ssPCM) framework, composed of multiple cycle-free parity-check row blocks (PCRBs). The resulting ssPCMs feature regular row weights and perform better than the state-of-theart 4 -cycle-free row redundant PCMs across Bose-Chaudhuri-Hocquenghem (BCH) codes of length 63.
Summary The simplicity of decoding is one of the most important characteristics of the low density parity check (LDPC) codes. Belief propagation (BP) decoding algorithm is a well‐known decoding algorithm for LDPC codes. Most LDPC codes with long lengths have short cycles in their Tanner graphs, which reduce the performance of the BP algorithm. In this paper, we present 2 methods to improve the BP decoding algorithm for LDPC codes. In these methods, the calculation of the variable nodes is controlled by using “multiplicative correction factor” and “additive correction factor.” These factors are obtained for 2 separate channels, namely additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and binary symmetric channel (BSC), as 2 functions of code and channel parameters. Moreover, we use the BP‐based method in the calculation of the check nodes, which reduces the required resources. Simulation results show the proposed algorithm has better performance and lower decoding error as compared to BP and similar methods like normalized‐BP and offset‐BP algorithms.
In this paper, we present a novel approach to improve belief propagation (BP) decoding performance by sparsifying the Tanner graph. Our proposed method first constructs a low-weight parity-check (LWPC) matrix with increased rows based on the original parity-check matrix. Then, all 4-cycles in the LWPC matrix are eliminated by adding auxiliary variable nodes and corresponding parity-check rows, resulting in the generalized LWPC (G-LWPC) matrix. Compared to the original matrix, the sparsity is greatly improved without altering the encoding constraints. Simulation results show that BP decoding based on the G-LWPC matrix is particularly effective for short code lengths. For a (128,20) polar code with 24-bit cyclic redundancy check, our proposed G-LWPC matrix reduces the density from 17.4% to 1.3%, and with 10 iterations, BP decoding can achieve the performance of successive cancellation list decoding with a list size of 32.
We consider near maximum-likelihood (ML) decoding of short linear block codes based on neural belief propagation (BP) decoding recently introduced by Nachmani et al.. While this method significantly outperforms conventional BP decoding, the underlying parity-check matrix may still limit the overall performance. In this paper, we introduce a method to tailor an overcomplete parity-check matrix to (neural) BP decoding using machine learning. We consider the weights in the Tanner graph as an indication of the importance of the connected check nodes (CNs) to decoding and use them to prune unimportant CNs. As the pruning is not tied over iterations, the final decoder uses a different parity-check matrix in each iteration. For ReedMuller and short low-density parity-check codes, we achieve performance within 0.27dB and 1.5dB of the ML performance while reducing the complexity of the decoder.
Low-Density Parity-Check (LDPC) codes are one of the most popular codes used in nowadays’ communication due to their high coding efficiency at low decoding complexity. With these characteristics, LDPC codes are suitable for high-speed information transmission systems. The widely used decoding algorithm for LDPC codes is Belief Propagation (BP) decoding with which the performance of LDPC codes can approach the Shannon limit. With the development of 5G, a lot of attention is given to the so-called ultra-reliable low latency communication scenario which needs the short code to transmit. However, short codes will not have a very good performance with BP decoding. To solve this problem, investigations have been done such as multiple-bases BP decoding. Although this decoding method has a better performance than BP decoding, it will cause a high complexity in the hardware implementation. Besides, an investigation on the stochastic decoding for shortcodes was proposed in 2003. This decoding method is hardware friendly, but its performance can only approach BP decoding. Inspired by multiple-bases BP decoding and stochastic decoding, binary stochastic decoding with parallel decoders is proposed in this thesis firstly. It represents stochastic sequences with multiple parallel Tanner graphs and uses hard-decision decoding in the iterative part because of the binary input bits. However, this decoding method has a severe performance loss compared to BP decoding. To avoid this problem, the enhancement method is used to make the binary sequences be non-binary sequences that can form more powerful parallel decoders. Then the non-binary symbols of these new sequences are transformed to their corresponding log-likelihood ratio which enables the iterative part to use BP decoding. In addition, combining with the ML decision of list decoding, the decision part of our stochastic decoder can fully utilize the output to increase the efficiency of the decoding method. After ensuring the performance of our non-binary stochastic decoding to be better than BP decoding, the complexity of the decoder is reduced to save the computational resources. Finally, with constant adjustments, the bit width of each non-binary symbol is determined to be 15, and the sequence length is reduced to 20 which can let the non-binary stochastic decoding has an acceptable complexity while keeping good performance.
Quantum stabilizer codes constructed from sparse matrices have good performance and can be efficiently decoded by belief propagation (BP). A conventional BP decoding algorithm treats binary stabilizer codes as additive codes over GF(4). This algorithm has a relatively complex process of handling check-node messages, which incurs higher decoding complexity. Moreover, BP decoding of a stabilizer code usually suffers a performance loss due to the many short cycles in the underlying Tanner graph. In this paper, we propose a refined BP decoding algorithm for quantum codes with complexity roughly the same as binary BP. For a given error syndrome, this algorithm decodes to the same output as the conventional quaternary BP but the passed node-to-node messages are single-valued, unlike the quaternary BP, where multivalued node-to-node messages are required. Furthermore, the techniques of message strength normalization can naturally be applied to these single-valued messages to improve the performance. Another observation is that the message-update schedule affects the performance of BP decoding against short cycles. We show that running BP with message strength normalization according to a serial schedule (or other schedules) may significantly improve the decoding performance and error floor in computer simulation.