International Symposium on Turbo Codes and Iterative Information Processing

High Girth Spatially-Coupled LDPC Codes with Hierarchical Structure

Haizheng Li, Sisi Miao, Laurent Schmalen

Published Aug 18, 2025• 1 citation

Abstract

Quasi-Cyclic (QC) low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes are a class of LDPC codes with a simple construction facilitating hardware implementation while achieving excellent performance. In this paper, we introduce an algorithm that constructs QC spatially-coupled (SC) LDPC codes with large girth while keeping the constraint length small. The algorithm offers a "protograph to basegraph" construction, focusing on finding small lifting sizes of QC codes while avoiding short cycles. This work extends the hierarchical quasi-cyclic (HQC) construction for block LDPC codes proposed by Wang et al. to the spatially coupled case. The construction is based on the cycle relevant matrix (CRM) derived from the periodic structure of time-invariant SC-LDPC codes. Numerical results show that the proposed algorithm effectively achieves the target girth with a small lifting factor, enabling low-complexity SC code construction.

DOI: 10.1109/istc65386.2025.11154552

Related papers

Design of Protograph-Based Quasi-Cyclic Spatially Coupled Ldpc Codes

Shuoshuo Wang, Zhanji Wu, Qihao Wu

In this paper, we deal with time-varing quasi-cyclic (QC) spatially-coupled (SC) low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes by lifting the coupled protographs. The construction method of girth-6 protographs for any code rate is proposed. We provide a theoretical lower bound on the syndrome former constraint length under condition of the protographs without 4-cycles in their Tanner graphs. Then we use periodic QC lifting method to search the QC-SC-LDPC matrices with larger girth based on the protographs. The minimum dimension size of QC-SC-LDPC codes is given to count the girth of QC-SC-LDPC codes with a semi- infinite binary-check matrix structure. The performance of such constructed codes with lower complexity and delay is superior to the LDPC block codes.

IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference Workshops (WCNCW)Apr 1, 20202 citations

Designing Protograph-Based Quasi-Cyclic Spatially Coupled LDPC Codes With Large Girth

Shiyuan Mo, Li Chen, Daniel J. Costello +3 more

Spatially coupled (SC) low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes can achieve capacity approaching performance with low message recovery latency when using sliding window (SW) decoding. An SC-LDPC code constructed from a protograph can be generated by first coupling a chain of block protographs and then lifting the coupled protograph using permutation matrices. In this paper, we introduce a systematic design to eliminate 4-cycles in a coupled protograph. Further using a quasi-cyclic (QC) lifting, we introduce a procedure for constructing QC-SC-LDPC codes of girth at least eight. This can be interpreted as a multi-stage graph lifting process that yields a greater flexibility in designing QC-SC-LDPC codes with a large girth than previous approaches. Simulation results show the design leads to improved decoding performance, particularly in the error floor, compared to random constructions. Finally, we determine the minimum coupling width required to eliminate 4-cycles in a coupled protograph.

IEEE Transactions on CommunicationsJun 9, 202028 citations

Hierarchical and High-Girth QC LDPC Codes

Yige Wang, Stark Christiaan Draper, Jonathan S. Yedidia

We present an approach to designing capacity-approaching high-girth low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes that are friendly to hardware implementation, and compatible with some desired input code structure defined using a protograph. The approach is based on a mapping of any class of codes defined using a protograph into a family of hierarchical quasi-cyclic (HQC) LDPC codes. Whereas the parity check matrices of standard quasi-cyclic (QC) LDPC codes are composed of circulant submatrices, those of HQC LDPC codes are composed of a hierarchy of circulant submatrices that are, in turn, constructed from circulant submatrices, and so on, through some number of levels. Next, we present a girth-maximizing algorithm that optimizes the degrees of freedom within the family of codes to yield a high-girth HQC LDPC code, subject to bounds imposed by the fact that HQC codes are still quasi-cyclic. Finally, we discuss how certain characteristics of a code protograph will lead to inevitable short cycles and show that these short cycles can be eliminated using a “squashing” procedure that results in a high-girth QC LDPC code, although not a hierarchical one. We illustrate our approach with three design examples of QC LDPC codes-two girth-10 codes of rates 1/3 and 0.45 and one girth-8 code of rate 0.7-all of which are obtained from protographs of one-sided spatially coupled codes.

arXiv:1111.0711IEEE Transactions on Information TheoryMar 20, 201351 citations

Hierarchical and High-Girth QC LDPC Codes

Y. Draper, S. C. Yedidia

We present an approach to designing capacityapproaching high-girth low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes that are friendly to hardware implementation, and compatible with some desired input code structure defined using a protograph. The approach is based on a mapping of any class of codes defined using a protograph into a family of hierarchical quasicyclic (HQC) LDPC codes. Whereas the parity check matrices of standard quasi-cyclic (QC) LDPC codes are composed of circulant sub-matrices, those of HQC LDPC codes are composed of a hierarchy of circulant sub-matrices that are in turn constructed from circulant sub-matrices, and so on, through some number of levels. Next, we present a girth-maximizing algorithm that optimizes the degrees of freedom within the family of codes to yield a high-girth HQC LDPC code, subject to bounds imposed by the fact that that HQC codes are still quasi-cyclic. Finally, we discuss how certain characteristics of a code protograph will lead to inevitable short cycles, and show that these short cycles can be eliminated using a squashing procedure that results in a high-girth QC LDPC code, although not a hierarchical one. We illustrate our approach with three design examples of QC LDPC codes two girth-10 codes of rates 1/3 and 0.45 and one girth-8 code of rate 0.7 all of which are obtained from protographs of one-sided spatially-coupled codes.

Jan 1, 201347 citations

Quasi-Cyclic Spatially Coupled LDPC Codes Construction with Girth Eight

Shikui Guo, Guohua Zhang

Small cycles in spatially coupled low-density paritycheck (SC-LDPC) codes have a detrimental effect on the error floor. Recently, an explicit simple method has been proposed to construct a class of 4-cycle free SC-LDPC codes by partitioning a spreading matrix into a number of component matrices. Using a quasi-cyclic (QC) lifting, we propose a component matrices construction method to obtain QC-SC-LDPC codes with a girth eight in this paper. The component matrices of the new method are completely defined by a spreading matrix and an exponent matrix. The spreading matrix is constructed from a finite sequence of integers, and the exponent matrix is constructed from the greatest common divisor (GCD) framework. The novel construction method demonstrates the capacity to entirely eliminate 6-cycles. Compared to the recently proposed explicit structural design, the proposed code achieves a girth of eight and exhibits better bit-error rate (BER) performance.

IEEE/CIC International Conference on Communications in China (ICCC)Aug 10, 20250 citations

A protograph-based design of quasi-cyclic spatially coupled LDPC codes

Li Chen, Shiyuan Mo, Daniel J. Costello +2 more

Spatially coupled (SC) low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes can achieve capacity approaching performance with low message recovery latency when using sliding window (SW) decoding. An SC-LDPC code constructed from a protograph can be generated by first coupling a chain of block protographs and then lifting the coupled protograph using permutation matrices. This paper introduces a systematic design of SC-LDPC codes to eliminate 4-cycles in the coupled photograph. Using a quasi-cyclic (QC) lifting, we obtain QC-SC-LDPC codes of girth at least eight. Coupling a chain of block protographs implies spreading edges from one protograph to the others. Our protograph-based design can be viewed as guiding the edge spreading and also the graph-lifting process. Simulation results show the design leads to improved decoding performance, particularly in the error floor, compared to random designs.

IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT)Jun 1, 201716 citations