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arXiv:cs/0508049

Characterizations of Pseudo-Codewords of LDPC Codes

R. Koetter, Wen-Ching W. Li, Pascal O. Vontobel, Judy L. Walker

Published Aug 9, 2005• 22 citations
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Abstract

An important property of high-performance, low complexity codes is the existence of highly efficient algorithms for their decoding. Many of the most efficient, recent graph-based algorithms, e.g. message passing algorithms and decoding based on linear programming, crucially depend on the efficient representation of a code in a graphical model. In order to understand the performance of these algorithms, we argue for the characterization of codes in terms of a so called fundamental cone in Euclidean space which is a function of a given parity check matrix of a code, rather than of the code itself. We give a number of properties of this fundamental cone derived from its connection to unramified covers of the graphical models on which the decoding algorithms operate. For the class of cycle codes, these developments naturally lead to a characterization of the fundamental polytope as the Newton polytope of the Hashimoto edge zeta function of the underlying graph.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.cs/0508049

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An important property of high-performance, low complexity codes is the existence of highly efficient algorithms for their decoding. Many of the most efficient, recent graph-based algorithms, e.g. message passing algorithms and decoding based on linear programming, crucially depend on the efficient representation of a code in a graphical model. In order to understand the performance of these algorithms, we argue for the characterization of codes in terms of a so called fundamental cone in Euclidean space which is a function of a given parity check matrix of a code, rather than of the code itself. We give a number of properties of this fundamental cone derived from its connection to unramified covers of the graphical models on which the decoding algorithms operate. For the class of cycle codes, these developments naturally lead to a characterization of the fundamental polytope as the Newton polytope of the Hashimoto edge zeta function of the underlying graph.
Cycle codes are a special case of low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes and as such can be decoded using an iterative message-passing decoding algorithm on the associated Tanner graph. The existence of pseudo-codewords is known to cause the decoding algorithm to fail in certain instances. In this paper, we draw a connection between pseudo-codewords of cycle codes and the so-called edge zeta function of the associated normal graph and show how the Newton polytope of the zeta function equals the fundamental cone of the code, which plays a crucial role in characterizing the performance of iterative decoding algorithms.
Linear-programming pseudocodewords play a pivotal role in our understanding of the linear-programming decoding algorithms. These pseudocodewords are known to be equivalent to the graph-cover pseudocodewords. The latter pseudocodewords, when viewed as points in the multidimensional Euclidean space, lie inside a fundamental cone. This fundamental cone depends on the choice of a parity-check matrix of a code, rather than on the choice of the code itself. The cone does not depend on the channel, over which the code is employed. The knowledge of the boundaries of the fundamental cone could help in studying various properties of the pseudocodewords, such as their minimum pseudoweight, pseudoredundancy of the codes, etc. For the binary codes, the full characterization of the fundamental cone was derived by Koetter et al. However, if the underlying alphabet is large, such characterization becomes more involved. In this work, a characterization of the fundamental cone for codes over F3is discussed.
The success of modern algorithms for the decoding problem such as message-passing iterative decoding and linear programming decoding lies in their local nature. This feature allows the algorithms to be extremely fast and capable of correcting more errors than guaranteed by the classical minimum distance of the code. Nonetheless, the performance of these decoders depends crucially on the Tanner graph representation of the code. In order to understand this choice of representation, we need to analyze the pseudocodewords of the Tanner graph of a code. These pseudocodewords are outputs of local decoding algorithms which may not be legitimate codewords. In this dissertation, we introduce a lifted fundamental cone and show that there is a one-to-one correspondence between graph cover pseudocodewords of a binary code and integer points in the lifted fundamental cone. We use this fact to prove the rationality of the generating function of the pseudocodewords for a general binary parity-check code. Our approach also yields algorithms for producing this generating function and provides tools for studying the irreducible pseudocodewords. Understanding irreducible pseudocodewords is crucial to determining the best representation of a code. Moreover, combining these techniques with the recent characterization of fundamental cone over F_3, we can analyze ternary parity-check codes. Finally, we make progress in the study of more general nonbinary codes by determining constraints satisfied by all pseudocodewords of a code over F_p where p is prime.
Characterization of Graph-cover Pseudocodewords of Codes over F3F_3F3​
Linear-programming pseudocodewords play a pivotal role in our understanding of the linear-programming decoding algorithms. These pseudocodewords are known to be equivalent to the graph-cover pseudocodewords. The latter pseudocodewords, when viewed as points in the multidimensional Euclidean space, lie inside a fundamental cone. This fundamental cone depends on the choice of a parity-check matrix of a code, rather than on the choice of the code itself. The cone does not depend on the channel, over which the code is employed. The knowledge of the boundaries of the fundamental cone could help in studying various properties of the pseudocodewords, such as their minimum pseudoweight, pseudoredundancy of the codes, etc. For the binary codes, the full characterization of the fundamental cone was derived by Koetter et al. However, if the underlying alphabet is large, such characterization becom is more involved. In this work, a characterization of the fundamental cone for codes over F3F_3F3​ is discussed.
The goal of the present paper is the derivation of a framework for the finite-length analysis of message-passing iterative decoding of low-density parity-check codes. To this end we introduce the concept of graph-cover decoding. Whereas in maximum-likelihood decoding all codewords in a code are competing to be the best explanation of the received vector, under graph-cover decoding all codewords in all finite covers of a Tanner graph representation of the code are competing to be the best explanation. We are interested in graph-cover decoding because it is a theoretical tool that can be used to show connections between linear programming decoding and message-passing iterative decoding. Namely, on the one hand it turns out that graph-cover decoding is essentially equivalent to linear programming decoding. On the other hand, because iterative, locally operating decoding algorithms like message-passing iterative decoding cannot distinguish the underlying Tanner graph from any covering graph, graph-cover decoding can serve as a model to explain the behavior of message-passing iterative decoding. Understanding the behavior of graph-cover decoding is tantamount to understanding the so-called fundamental polytope. Therefore, we give some characterizations of this polytope and explain its relation to earlier concepts that were introduced to understand the behavior of message-passing iterative decoding for finite-length codes.