Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Log inSign up
Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Blog
Job Board
Q3AS

© 2026 Aqora Quantum S.A.S.

TermsPrivacyLegal Notice

IETE Journal of Research

Low Complexity Gated Neural Min-Sum Decoding for Block Codes

Pooja Pathak, Richa Bhatia

Published Aug 4, 2025• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

For short to moderate-length block codes, neural belief propagation (NBP) decoders are developed to ameliorate the performance of the belief propagation algorithm (BPA). The core concept underlying these decoders is to model belief propagation (BP) as a neural network, allowing adaptable decoding through trainable weights. The article proposes a novel Gated neural min-sum (GNMS) decoding technique with learnable parameters as a more hardware-efficient substitute for conventional NBP decoders. By using parameterised updates and gating techniques, our approach reformulates the min-sum (MS) algorithm, which is an approximation of BP, while preserving the flexibility of neural approaches and drastically lowering computing overhead. Additionally, we develop an autoencoder-assisted framework that supports flexible, learning-based optimisation for GNMS and Gated Neural Offset Min-Sum (GNOMS) decoders. The suggested decoders achieve error-correction performance at par with the most advanced NBP decoders by evaluating them on a variety of short to moderate-length block codes. Notably, when compared to traditional BP, the suggested approach lowers the bit error rate (BER) 10-fold for signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) greater than 3 dB. Furthermore, the efficacy of the proposed work is exhibited by comparing the computational complexity of the neural network-based decoders, highlighting the advantages in terms of practical implementation and hardware feasibility. The simulation results demonstrate that GNMS decoding with learnable parameters offers a convincing trade-off between complexity and performance, offering a potential path for future decoder design in contemporary communication systems.

DOI
10.1080/03772063.2025.2538584

Related papers

A Neuromorphic Approach to LDPC Decoding with Spiking Belief Propagation

Lucas Pelz, Ahsan Javed Awan, Mustafa Özger

The rapid growth of mobile data traffic demands increasingly energy-efficient error correction solutions. Traditional decoding based on Belief Propagation (BP) often relies on the approximate Min-Sum (MS) algorithm for efficiency reasons, leading to performance degradation. While machine learning approaches like Neural Normalized Offset Min-Sum (NNOMS) mitigate this, they also introduce complexity inherent to artificial neural networks (ANNs). To address this trade-off, this paper designs and evaluates a Spiking Normalized Offset Min-Sum (SNOMS), a Spiking Neural Network-based decoder compatible with Digital Neuromorphic Hardware (DNH) such as Intel's Loihi 2. SNOMS translates the parameter-learned decoding of NNOMS into the event-driven domain. Through simulation, SNOMS achieves performance competitive with its NNOMS baseline, incurring a maximum penalty of only 0.05 dB on Low-Density Parity-Check (LDPC) codes when measuring Block Error Rate. These results points us toward both more efficient trainable decoding algorithms and specialized, energyefficient neuromorphic decoding hardware, building a foundation for future sustainable wireless communication.

Joint European Conference on Networks and Communications & 6G Summit (EuCNC/6G Summit)•Jun 2, 2026•0 citations

Neural offset min-sum decoding

Loren Lugosch, Warren J. Gross

Recently, it was shown that if multiplicative weights are assigned to the edges of a Tanner graph used in belief propagation decoding, it is possible to use deep learning techniques to find values for the weights which improve the error-correction performance of the decoder. Unfortunately, this approach requires many multiplications, which are generally expensive operations. In this paper, we suggest a more hardware-friendly approach in which offset min-sum decoding is augmented with learnable offset parameters. Our method uses no multiplications and has a parameter count less than half that of the multiplicative algorithm. This both speeds up training and provides a feasible path to hardware architectures. After describing our method, we compare the performance of the two neural decoding algorithms and show that our method achieves error-correction performance within 0.1 dB of the multiplicative approach and as much as 1 dB better than traditional belief propagation for the codes under consideration.

arXiv:1701.05931•IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT)•Jun 1, 2017•172 citations

A Low Complexity Model-Driven Deep Learning LDPC Decoding Algorithm

Qingle Wu, Su-Kit Tang, Yuanhui Liang +2 more

A novel Neural Offset Min-Sum(NOMS) Belief Propagation(BP) decoding algorithm based on model-driven is proposed which applied to LDPC decoding. NOMS is improved multiplication in Neural Normalized Min-Sum(NNMS) into addition operation to reduce the complexity of calculation., a better Bit Error Rate (BER) performance is simultaneously achieved in the same condition. Secondly, considering that there are still many multiplication operations in NOMS, we propose a novel Shared Offset Min-Sum(SNOMS) to reduce the number of weights in the network by sharing parameters. Finally, codebook-based quantization is used to further reduce the memory consumption. Simulation experimental results show that the proposed method has a better BER performance, and the decoding accuracy of the decoder is 0.65dB higher than that of the NNMS after 5 iterations. In addition, SNOMS decoding method achieves almost the same decoding performance comparable to that of NOMS, but requires less complex calculation. Proposed quantization of code-book method reduces memory requirement significantly with slight performance loss.

International Conference on Computer and Communication Systems (ICCCS)•Apr 23, 2021•6 citations

Low Complexity Neural Network-Aided NMS LDPC Decoder

Honghao Shi, Mingyang Zhong, Zhiyong Luo +1 more

For recent years, deep learning has been studied and utilized among decoders in wireless and optical communication. For low density parity check (LDPC) codes, most works use neural network (NN) to implement the belief propagation (BP) decoder and unfold its iterations into layers activated by different functions. However, the whole decoder composed by neural network performs lots of non-linear operations, which are time consuming and unfriendly to hardware implementation. In this work, a neural network-aided normalized min-sum (NN-aided NMS) decoder for LDPC code is proposed, in which the normalization factors are inferred from input log likelihood ratio (LLR) by apre-trained NN, while maintaining check and variable nodes processing the same as in min-sum (MS) decoder. In order to test the proposed decoder with irregular LDPC code, a rate-7/8 one was constructed using progressive edge growth (PEG) algorithm, showing better error correction capability than the standard of consultative committee for space data systems (CCSDS) LDPC (8176,7154) code by 0.08 dB with the same rate. Simulation results show that, NN-aided NMS decoder outperforms MS decoder by 0.3 dB, and its performance approaches BP decoder with a gap of 0.02 dB, which is 50% closer than the best NMS decoder using 0.7 as the normalization factor. The proposed decoder has good performance for both regular and irregular LDPC codes, and needs much less computation complexity than BP decoder. It introduces more linear computation than NMS decoder but achieves better bit error rate (BER) performance, thus becoming a good complement between BP and NMS decoder when trading off among complexity, error correction performance and hardware implementation for wireless and satellite communication.

Computing, Communications and IoT Applications (ComComAp)•Nov 26, 2021•8 citations

Low-Complexity Neural Belief Propagation Algorithm for LDPC Decoding

Haojia Zhang, Shuai Han, Hao Chen

With the rapid development of deep learning research and physical layer communication applications, deep learning-based channel coding has gradually become a research hotspot. In this paper, we propose a LDPC decoding network based on neural belief propagation (NBP) decoding. By introducing weights sharing mechanism, the weights vary across different iterations. The number of parameters is reduced, which significantly lowers memory requirements. In addition, we optimize the loss function to better train the model, achieving a lower bit error rate (BER) performance. Experimental results show that the proposed decoder yields significant performance improvements with respect to NBP, and significantly reducing the number of learnable weights.

International Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing Conference (IWCMC)•May 12, 2025•4 citations

Pruning and Quantizing Neural Belief Propagation Decoders

Andreas Buchberger, Christian Häger, Henry D. Pfister +2 more

We consider near maximum-likelihood (ML) decoding of short linear block codes. In particular, we propose a novel decoding approach based on neural belief propagation (NBP) decoding recently introduced by Nachmani et al. in which we allow a different parity-check matrix in each iteration of the algorithm. The key idea is to consider NBP decoding over an overcomplete parity-check matrix and use the weights of NBP as a measure of the importance of the check nodes (CNs) to decoding. The unimportant CNs are then pruned. In contrast to NBP, which performs decoding on a given fixed parity-check matrix, the proposed pruning-based neural belief propagation (PB-NBP) typically results in a different parity-check matrix in each iteration. For a given complexity in terms of CN evaluations, we show that PB-NBP yields significant performance improvements with respect to NBP. We apply the proposed decoder to the decoding of a Reed-Muller code, a short low-density parity-check (LDPC) code, and a polar code. PB-NBP outperforms NBP decoding over an overcomplete parity-check matrix by 0.27-0.31 dB while reducing the number of required CN evaluations by up to 97%. For the LDPC code, PB-NBP outperforms conventional belief propagation with the same number of CN evaluations by 0.52 dB. We further extend the pruning concept to offset min-sum decoding and introduce a pruning-based neural offset min-sum (PB-NOMS) decoder, for which we jointly optimize the offsets and the quantization of the messages and offsets. We demonstrate performance 0.5 dB from ML decoding with 5-bit quantization for the Reed-Muller code.

arXiv:2011.13594•IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications•Dec 4, 2020•52 citations
For short to moderate-length block codes, neural belief propagation (NBP) decoders are developed to ameliorate the performance of the belief propagation algorithm (BPA). The core concept underlying these decoders is to model belief propagation (BP) as a neural network, allowing adaptable decoding through trainable weights. The article proposes a novel Gated neural min-sum (GNMS) decoding technique with learnable parameters as a more hardware-efficient substitute for conventional NBP decoders. By using parameterised updates and gating techniques, our approach reformulates the min-sum (MS) algorithm, which is an approximation of BP, while preserving the flexibility of neural approaches and drastically lowering computing overhead. Additionally, we develop an autoencoder-assisted framework that supports flexible, learning-based optimisation for GNMS and Gated Neural Offset Min-Sum (GNOMS) decoders. The suggested decoders achieve error-correction performance at par with the most advanced NBP decoders by evaluating them on a variety of short to moderate-length block codes. Notably, when compared to traditional BP, the suggested approach lowers the bit error rate (BER) 10-fold for signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) greater than 3 dB. Furthermore, the efficacy of the proposed work is exhibited by comparing the computational complexity of the neural network-based decoders, highlighting the advantages in terms of practical implementation and hardware feasibility. The simulation results demonstrate that GNMS decoding with learnable parameters offers a convincing trade-off between complexity and performance, offering a potential path for future decoder design in contemporary communication systems.
The rapid growth of mobile data traffic demands increasingly energy-efficient error correction solutions. Traditional decoding based on Belief Propagation (BP) often relies on the approximate Min-Sum (MS) algorithm for efficiency reasons, leading to performance degradation. While machine learning approaches like Neural Normalized Offset Min-Sum (NNOMS) mitigate this, they also introduce complexity inherent to artificial neural networks (ANNs). To address this trade-off, this paper designs and evaluates a Spiking Normalized Offset Min-Sum (SNOMS), a Spiking Neural Network-based decoder compatible with Digital Neuromorphic Hardware (DNH) such as Intel's Loihi 2. SNOMS translates the parameter-learned decoding of NNOMS into the event-driven domain. Through simulation, SNOMS achieves performance competitive with its NNOMS baseline, incurring a maximum penalty of only 0.05 dB on Low-Density Parity-Check (LDPC) codes when measuring Block Error Rate. These results points us toward both more efficient trainable decoding algorithms and specialized, energyefficient neuromorphic decoding hardware, building a foundation for future sustainable wireless communication.
Recently, it was shown that if multiplicative weights are assigned to the edges of a Tanner graph used in belief propagation decoding, it is possible to use deep learning techniques to find values for the weights which improve the error-correction performance of the decoder. Unfortunately, this approach requires many multiplications, which are generally expensive operations. In this paper, we suggest a more hardware-friendly approach in which offset min-sum decoding is augmented with learnable offset parameters. Our method uses no multiplications and has a parameter count less than half that of the multiplicative algorithm. This both speeds up training and provides a feasible path to hardware architectures. After describing our method, we compare the performance of the two neural decoding algorithms and show that our method achieves error-correction performance within 0.1 dB of the multiplicative approach and as much as 1 dB better than traditional belief propagation for the codes under consideration.
A novel Neural Offset Min-Sum(NOMS) Belief Propagation(BP) decoding algorithm based on model-driven is proposed which applied to LDPC decoding. NOMS is improved multiplication in Neural Normalized Min-Sum(NNMS) into addition operation to reduce the complexity of calculation., a better Bit Error Rate (BER) performance is simultaneously achieved in the same condition. Secondly, considering that there are still many multiplication operations in NOMS, we propose a novel Shared Offset Min-Sum(SNOMS) to reduce the number of weights in the network by sharing parameters. Finally, codebook-based quantization is used to further reduce the memory consumption. Simulation experimental results show that the proposed method has a better BER performance, and the decoding accuracy of the decoder is 0.65dB higher than that of the NNMS after 5 iterations. In addition, SNOMS decoding method achieves almost the same decoding performance comparable to that of NOMS, but requires less complex calculation. Proposed quantization of code-book method reduces memory requirement significantly with slight performance loss.
For recent years, deep learning has been studied and utilized among decoders in wireless and optical communication. For low density parity check (LDPC) codes, most works use neural network (NN) to implement the belief propagation (BP) decoder and unfold its iterations into layers activated by different functions. However, the whole decoder composed by neural network performs lots of non-linear operations, which are time consuming and unfriendly to hardware implementation. In this work, a neural network-aided normalized min-sum (NN-aided NMS) decoder for LDPC code is proposed, in which the normalization factors are inferred from input log likelihood ratio (LLR) by apre-trained NN, while maintaining check and variable nodes processing the same as in min-sum (MS) decoder. In order to test the proposed decoder with irregular LDPC code, a rate-7/8 one was constructed using progressive edge growth (PEG) algorithm, showing better error correction capability than the standard of consultative committee for space data systems (CCSDS) LDPC (8176,7154) code by 0.08 dB with the same rate. Simulation results show that, NN-aided NMS decoder outperforms MS decoder by 0.3 dB, and its performance approaches BP decoder with a gap of 0.02 dB, which is 50% closer than the best NMS decoder using 0.7 as the normalization factor. The proposed decoder has good performance for both regular and irregular LDPC codes, and needs much less computation complexity than BP decoder. It introduces more linear computation than NMS decoder but achieves better bit error rate (BER) performance, thus becoming a good complement between BP and NMS decoder when trading off among complexity, error correction performance and hardware implementation for wireless and satellite communication.
With the rapid development of deep learning research and physical layer communication applications, deep learning-based channel coding has gradually become a research hotspot. In this paper, we propose a LDPC decoding network based on neural belief propagation (NBP) decoding. By introducing weights sharing mechanism, the weights vary across different iterations. The number of parameters is reduced, which significantly lowers memory requirements. In addition, we optimize the loss function to better train the model, achieving a lower bit error rate (BER) performance. Experimental results show that the proposed decoder yields significant performance improvements with respect to NBP, and significantly reducing the number of learnable weights.
We consider near maximum-likelihood (ML) decoding of short linear block codes. In particular, we propose a novel decoding approach based on neural belief propagation (NBP) decoding recently introduced by Nachmani et al. in which we allow a different parity-check matrix in each iteration of the algorithm. The key idea is to consider NBP decoding over an overcomplete parity-check matrix and use the weights of NBP as a measure of the importance of the check nodes (CNs) to decoding. The unimportant CNs are then pruned. In contrast to NBP, which performs decoding on a given fixed parity-check matrix, the proposed pruning-based neural belief propagation (PB-NBP) typically results in a different parity-check matrix in each iteration. For a given complexity in terms of CN evaluations, we show that PB-NBP yields significant performance improvements with respect to NBP. We apply the proposed decoder to the decoding of a Reed-Muller code, a short low-density parity-check (LDPC) code, and a polar code. PB-NBP outperforms NBP decoding over an overcomplete parity-check matrix by 0.27-0.31 dB while reducing the number of required CN evaluations by up to 97%. For the LDPC code, PB-NBP outperforms conventional belief propagation with the same number of CN evaluations by 0.52 dB. We further extend the pruning concept to offset min-sum decoding and introduce a pruning-based neural offset min-sum (PB-NOMS) decoder, for which we jointly optimize the offsets and the quantization of the messages and offsets. We demonstrate performance 0.5 dB from ML decoding with 5-bit quantization for the Reed-Muller code.