Several properties of short LDPC codes

In this paper, we present several properties on minimum distance(d/sub min/) and girth(G/sub min/) in Tanner graphs for low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes with small left degrees. We show that the distance growth of (2, 4) LDPC codes is too slow to achieve the desired performance. We further give a tight upper bound on the maximum possible girth. The numerical results show that codes with large G/sub min/ could outperform the average performance of regular ensembles of the LDPC codes over binary symmetric channels. The same codes perform about 1.5 dB away from the sphere-packing bound on additive white Gaussian noise channels.     

Unequal error protection for convolutional codes

In this correspondence, unequal error-correcting capabilities of convolutional codes are studied. For errors in the information symbols and code symbols, the free input- and output-distances, respectively, serve as "unequal" counterparts to the free distance. When communication takes place close to or above the channel capacity the error bursts tend to be long and the free distance is not any longer useful as the measure of the error correcting capability. Thus, the active burst distance for a given output and the active burst distance for a given input are introduced as "unequal" counterparts to the active burst distance and improved estimates of the unequal error-correcting capabilities of convolutional codes are obtained and illustrated by examples. Finally, it is shown how to obtain unequal error protection for both information and code symbols using woven convolutional codes.     

Multilevel codes for unequal error protection

Two combined unequal error protection (UEP) coding and modulation schemes are proposed. The first method multiplexes different coded signal constellations, with each coded constellation providing a different level of error protection. In this method, a codeword specifies the multiplexing rule and the choice of the codeword from a fixed codebook is used to convey additional important information. The decoder determines the multiplexing rule before decoding the rest of the data. The second method is based on partitioning a signal constellation into disjoint subsets in which the most important data sequence is encoded, using most of the available redundancy, to specify a sequence of subsets. The partitioning and code construction is done to maximize the minimum Euclidean distance between two different valid subset sequences. This leads to ways of partitioning the signal constellations into subsets. The less important data selects a sequence of signal points to be transmitted from the subsets. A side benefit of the proposed set partitioning procedure is a reduction in the number of nearest neighbors, sometimes even over the uncoded signal constellation     

Linear unequal error protection codes from shorter codes (Corresp.)

The methods for combining codes, such as the direct sum, direct product, and|u|u + v|constructions, concatenation, etc., are extended to linear unequal error protection codes.     

Finding short and light codewords in BCH codes

A new algorithm is presented for finding codewords that are of low weight (“light”) and low degree (“short”) in narrow-sense binary BCH codes of length n=2^m-1 and minimum weight d=2^t-1, for use in serial implementations. This improves on some earlier results by Roth and Scroussi (see ibid., vol.34, p.593-6, May 1998), and extends the range of parameters to include cases of interest for long CRC (cyclic redundancy codes) error-detection schemes     

Concatenated Reed-Muller codes for unequal error protection

We present a new coding scheme that combines the advantages of a product-like concatenation of Reed-Muller codes with so-called iterative “turbo” decoding and provides powerful unequal error protection abilities. It is shown that various levels of error protection can be realized using a sophisticated encoding scheme for Reed-Muller codes. A discussion of this code construction, the resulting distance profile between the different levels and the iterative decoding scheme is given. The results are very promising and impressively confirm the unequal error protection capabilities of the presented coding scheme     

On decoding unequal error protection product codes

The decoding of unequal error protection product codes, which are a combination of linear unequal error protection (UEP) codes and product codes, is addressed. A nonconstructive proof of the existence of a good error-erasure-decoding algorithm is presented; however, obtaining the decoding procedure is still an open research problem. A particular subclass of UEP product codes is considered, including a decoding algorithm that is an extension of the Blokh-Zyablov decoding algorithm for product codes. For this particular subclass the decoding problem is solved     

Parallel concatenated codes with unequal error protection

We show how parallel concatenated codes (PCCs, also known as “turbo codes”) can be endowed with unequal error protection (UEP). Given the two component encoders of the PCC encoder and the desired interleaver size, UEP is achieved by: (1) suitably positioning the different importance classes of information symbols into the encoder input frame; (2) puncturing the PCC redundancy symbols with a nonuniform pattern; and (3) choosing the interleaver of the PCC encoder in a class of interleavers that guarantees isolation of the importance classes. By controlling the amount of redundancy assigned to each importance class and the class positioning in the input frame, a whole family of UEP PCCs with different UEP levels can be obtained from the same component encoders and interleaver size. From a practical viewpoint, a family of UEP PCCs can be decoded by the same “turbo” iterative decoder, provided that the decoder hardware implementation allows for programmable puncturing and interleaving     

QPSK block-modulation codes for unequal error protection

Unequal error protection (UEP) codes find applications in broadcast channels, as well as in other digital communication systems, where messages have different degrees of importance. Binary linear UEP (LUEP) codes combined with a Gray mapped QPSK signal set are used to obtain new efficient QPSK block-modulation codes for unequal error protection. Several examples of QPSK modulation codes that have the same minimum squared Euclidean distance as the best QPSK modulation codes, of the same rate and length, are given. In the new constructions of QPSK block-modulation codes, even-length binary LUEP codes are used. Good even-length binary LUEP codes are obtained when shorter binary linear codes are combined using either the well-known |u¯|u¯+v¯|-construction or the so-called construction X. Both constructions have the advantage of resulting in optimal or near-optimal binary LUEP codes of short to moderate lengths, using very simple linear codes, and may be used as constituent codes in the new constructions. LUEP codes lend themselves quite naturally to multistage decoding up to their minimum distance, using the decoding of component subcodes. A new suboptimal two-stage soft-decision decoding of LUEP codes is presented and its application to QPSK block-modulation codes for UEP illustrated     

Cosets of convolutional codes with short maximum zero-run lengths

Communication systems and storage systems derive symbol synchronization from the received symbol stream. To facilitate symbol synchronization, the channel sequences must have a short maximum zero-run length. One way to achieve this is to use a coset of an (n, k) convolutional code to generate the channel inputs. For k⩽n-2, it is shown that there exist cosets with short maximum zero-run length for any constraint length. Any coset of an (n, n-1) code with high rate and/or large constraint length is shown to have a large maximum zero-run length. A systematic procedure for obtaining cosets with short maximum zero-run length from (n, k) codes is presented, and new cosets with short maximum zero-run length and large minimum Hamming distance are tabulated     

Expanding window fountain codes for unequal error protection

A novel approach to provide unequal error protection (UEP) using rateless codes over erasure channels, named Expanding Window Fountain (EWF) codes, is developed and discussed. EWF codes use a windowing technique rather than a weighted (non-uniform) selection of input symbols to achieve UEP property. The windowing approach introduces additional parameters in the UEP rateless code design, making it more general and flexible than the weighted approach. Furthermore, the windowing approach provides better performance of UEP scheme, which is confirmed both theoretically and experimentally.     

LDPC码的不等误差保护性能研究

非规则LDPC(low-density parity-check)码具有不等误差保护性能,但是随机编码过程却使这一特性很难实现.现将PEG(Progressive Edge-Growth)算法与信道编码的UEP(Unequal Error Protection)性能相结合,用于构造具有不等误差保护性能的校验矩阵H.AWGN和Rayleigh信道的仿真结果表明,采用PEG算法构造的具有UEP性能的非规则LDPC码能够有效提高系统性能.     

Modified Plotkin bound for unequal error protection codes

The modified Plotkin bound for unequal error protection (UEP) codes is derived. Based on the separation vector of UEP codes, the authors adopt the average separation of all information digits of a given UEP code, and replacing it with minimum distance in the normal Plotkin bound leads to the new bound, which is valid for both linear and nonlinear UEP codes     

On the better protection of short-frame turbo codes

Protecting short data frames by turbo coding is a challenging task because of the small interleaver size and the need for transmission efficiency. In this letter, turbo-decoding-metrics aided short cyclic redundancy check codes are applied to novel tailbiting encoded trellis codes with a twofold purpose: to stop the iterative decoding processes to achieve low-power design and to reduce fractional coding-rate loss. Significant coding gains can be achieved by actually increasing the transmission rate with a negligible increase in power consumption. Performance improvement is demonstrated over additive white Gaussian noise channels. The savings is up to 21.4% for the transmission throughput and 21.5% for the energy consumption of the turbo decoder when frame size 49 is used.     

New results on self-orthogonal unequal error protection codes

A lower bound on the length of binary self-orthogonal unequal error protection (UEP) codes is derived, and two design procedures for constructing optimal self-orthogonal UEP codes are proposed. With this lower bound, known self-orthogonal UEP codes can be evaluated. It is pointed out that, for given values of minimum distance and code rate, the self-orthogonal codes must be relatively long, so optimal self-orthogonal codes are not optimal in general. But self-orthogonal codes can be implemented simply, and they have error-correcting capabilities beyond those guaranteed by their minimum distance. These properties can be viewed as a partial compensation for using self-orthogonal codes     

Variable shortened-and-punctured Reed-Solomon codes for packet loss protection

Techniques using Reed-Solomon (RS) codes to recover lost packets in digital video/audio broadcasting and packet switched network communications are reviewed. Usually, different RS codes and their corresponding encoders/decoders are designed and utilized to meet different requirements for different systems and applications. We incorporate these techniques into a variable RS code and present encoding and decoding algorithms suitable for the variable RS code. A mother RS code can be used to produce a variety of RS codes and the same encoder/decoder can be used for all the derivative codes, with adding/detecting zeros, removing some parity symbols and adding erasures. A VLSI implementation for erasure decoding of the variable RS code is described and the achievable performance is quantitatively analyzed. A typical example shows that the signal processing speed is up to 2.5 Gbits/second and the processing delay is less than one millisecond, when integrating the decoder on a single chip. Therefore, the proposed algorithm and the encoder/decoder can universally be utilized for different applications with various requirements, such as transmission data rate, packet length, packet loss protection capacity, as well as layered protection and adaptive redundancy protection in DVB/DAB, Internet and mobile Internet communications.     

Constructing linear unequal error protection codes from algebraic curves

We show that the concept of "generalized algebraic geometry codes" which was introduced by Xing, Niederreiter, and Lam (see ibid., vol.45, p.2498-2501, Nov. 1999) gives a natural framework for constructing linear unequal error protection codes.     

Cyclic codes with unequal error protection (Corresp.)

This paper shows that, although systematic cyclic codes have equal error protection for all information digits, there exist non-systematic cyclic codes that can provide unequal error protection for the information digits; that is, at least one information digit is protected for a number of errors that is larger than the number guaranteed by the minimum distance of the code.     

New results on unequal error protection using LDPC codes

In this letter, we propose a new scheme to construct low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes that are suitable for unequal error protection (UEP). We derive UEP density evolution (UDE) formulas for the proposed ensemble over the binary erasure channel (BEC). Using the UDE formulas, high performance UEP codes can be found. Simulation results depict an improvement in the bit error rate of more important bits in comparison with previous results on UEP-LDPC codes.     

Unequal error protection of PCM signals by self-orthogonalconvolutional codes

In the PCM (pulse-code modulation) transmission system discussed, the influence of bit errors on the demodulated signal-to-noise ratio differs in the erroneous bit position. The demodulated signal-to-noise ratio can be improved when the PCM signals are protected so that the decoded bit error rate in more important bit position may be lower. Assigning a different number of orthogonal check sums to each information bit of self-orthogonal convolutional code provides a different error protection capability to each information bit. The author presents an unequal error protection self-orthogonal convolutional code with different error protection capability for each information bit, and discusses the condition that makes the demodulated signal-to-noise ratio of PCM signals maximum