Codelucida, Inc.

Stmicroelectronics S.a.

Shiva Kumar Planjery

David Declercq

Benedict J Reynwar

Shashi Kiran Chilappagari

Bane Vasic

This invention presents a method and apparatus for vertical layered finite alphabet iterative decoding of low-density parity-check codes (LDPC) which operate on parity check matrices that consist of blocks of sub-matrices. The iterative decoding involves passing messages between variable nodes and check nodes of the Tanner graph that associated with one or more sub-matrices constitute decoding blocks, and the messages belong to a finite alphabet. Various embodiments for the method and apparatus of the invention are presented that can achieve very high throughputs with low hardware resource usage and power.

Vertical layered finite alphabet iterative decoding

In this invention, a new class of finite precision multilevel decoders for low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes is presented. These decoders are much lower in complexity compared to the standard belief propagation (BP) decoder. Messages utilized by these decoders are quantized to certain levels based on the number of bits allowed for representation in hardware. A message update function specifically defined as part of the invention, is used to determine the outgoing message at the variable node, and the simple min operation along with modulo 2 sum of signs is used at the check node. A general methodology is provided to obtain the multilevel decoders, which is based on reducing failures due to trapping sets and improving the guaranteed error-correction capability of a code. Hence these decoders improve the iterative decoding process on finite length graphs and have the potential to outperform the standard floating-point BP decoder in the error floor region. The description and apparatus of 3-bit decoders for column-weight three LDPC codes is also presented.

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Tucson, AZ, United States of America

Shiva Kumar Planjery