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The goal of the paper is to study specific properties of nonbinary low-density parity-check (NB LDPC) codes when used in coded modulation systems. The paper is focused on the practically important NB LDPC codes over extensions of the Galois field GF$(2^m)$ with $m \le 6$ used with QAM signaling. Performance of NB QC LDPC coded transmission strongly depends on mapping of nonbinary symbols to signal constellation points. We obtain a random coding bound on the maximum-likelihood decoding error probability for an ensemble of random irregular NB LDPC codes used with QAM signaling for specific symbol-to-signal point mappings. This bound is based on the ensemble average Euclidean distance spectra derived for these mappings. The simulation results for the belief-propagation decoding in the coded modulation schemes with the NB quasi-cyclic (QC)-LDPC codes under different mappings are given. Comparisons with the optimized binary QC-LDPC codes in the WiFi and 5G standards, as well as with the new bound, are performed., Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2006.12147

We propose an approach for optimizing nonbinary (NB) quasi-cyclic (QC) LDPC codes. This approach combines constructing of base parity-check matrices by simulated annealing and labeling the obtained base matrices aimed at maximizing the so-called generalized girth of the NB LDPC code Tanner graph. Tightened random coding bounds based on the average binary spectra for ensembles of "almost regular" NB LDPC codes of finite lengths over extensions of the binary Galois field are derived. The simulated FER performance of the sum-product BP decoding of "almost regular" NB QC-LDPC block codes are presented and compared with the derived finite-length random coding bounds as well as with the same performance of the optimized binary QC-LDPC block code in the 5G standard. In the waterfall region our finite-length bounds on the error probability of ML decoding are about 0.1--0.2 dB away from the simulated FER performance of BP decoding., Comment: 26 pages

Stopping sets play a crucial role in failure events of iterative decoders over a binary erasure channel (BEC). The $\ell$-th stopping redundancy is the minimum number of rows in the parity-check matrix of a code, which contains no stopping sets of size up to $\ell$. In this work, a notion of coverable stopping sets is defined. In order to achieve maximum-likelihood performance under iterative decoding over the BEC, the parity-check matrix should contain no coverable stopping sets of size $\ell$, for $1 \le \ell \le n-k$, where $n$ is the code length, $k$ is the code dimension. By estimating the number of coverable stopping sets, we obtain upper bounds on the $\ell$-th stopping redundancy, $1 \le \ell \le n-k$. The bounds are derived for both specific codes and code ensembles. In the range $1 \le \ell \le d-1$, for specific codes, the new bounds improve on the results in the literature. Numerical calculations are also presented., Comment: Accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Information Theory

The performance of maximum-likelihood (ML) decoding on the binary erasure channel for finite-length low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes from two random ensembles is studied. The theoretical average spectrum of the Gallager ensemble is computed by using a recurrent procedure and compared to the empirically found average spectrum for the same ensemble as well as to the empirical average spectrum of the Richardson-Urbanke ensemble and spectra of selected codes from both ensembles. Distance properties of the random codes from the Gallager ensemble are discussed. A tightened union-type upper bound on the ML decoding error probability based on the precise coefficients of the average spectrum is presented. A new upper bound on the ML decoding performance of LDPC codes from the Gallager ensemble based on computing the rank of submatrices of the code parity-check matrix is derived. A new low-complexity near-ML decoding algorithm for quasi-cyclic LDPC codes is proposed and simulated. Its performance is compared to the upper bounds on the ML decoding performance., Comment: To appear in IEEE Transactions on Communications

Parameters of LDPC codes, such as minimum distance, stopping distance, stopping redundancy, girth of the Tanner graph, and their influence on the frame error rate performance of the BP, ML and near-ML decoding over a BEC and an AWGN channel are studied. Both random and structured LDPC codes are considered. In particular, the BP decoding is applied to the code parity-check matrices with an increasing number of redundant rows, and the convergence of the performance to that of the ML decoding is analyzed. A comparison of the simulated BP, ML, and near-ML performance with the improved theoretical bounds on the error probability based on the exact weight spectrum coefficients and the exact stopping size spectrum coefficients is presented. It is observed that decoding performance very close to the ML decoding performance can be achieved with a relatively small number of redundant rows for some codes, for both the BEC and the AWGN channels.

A new method for low-complexity near-maximum-likelihood (ML) decoding of low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes over the additive white Gaussian noise channel is presented. The proposed method termed belief-propagation--list erasure decoding (BP-LED) is based on erasing carefully chosen unreliable bits performed in case of BP decoding failure. A strategy of introducing erasures into the received vector and a new erasure decoding algorithm are proposed. The new erasure decoding algorithm, called list erasure decoding, combines ML decoding over the BEC with list decoding applied if the ML decoder fails to find a unique solution. The asymptotic exponent of the average list size for random regular LDPC codes from the Gallager ensemble is analyzed. Furthermore, a few examples of regular and irregular quasi-cyclic LDPC codes of short and moderate lengths are studied by simulations and their performance is compared with the upper bound on the LDPC ensemble-average performance and the upper bound on the average performance of random linear codes under ML decoding. A comparison with the BP decoding performance of the WiMAX standard codes and performance of the near-ML BEAST decoding are presented. The new algorithm is applied to decoding a short nonbinary LDPC code over the extension of the binary Galois field. The obtained simulation results are compared to the upper bound on the ensemble-average performance of the binary image of regular nonbinary LDPC codes., Comment: Submitted to IEEE Transactions on Information Theory

This paper studies an almost-lossless source-channel coding scheme in which source messages are assigned to different classes and encoded with a channel code that depends on the class index. The code performance is analyzed by means of random-coding error exponents and validated by simulation of a low-complexity implementation using existing source and channel codes. While each class code can be seen as a concatenation of a source code and a channel code, the overall performance improves on that of separate source-channel coding and approaches that of joint source-channel coding when the number of classes increases., Comment: Published in the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory

In 1995, Best et al. published a formula for the exact bit error probability for Viterbi decoding of the rate R=1/2, memory m=1 (2-state) convolutional encoder with generator matrix G(D)=(1 1+D) when used to communicate over the binary symmetric channel. Their formula was later extended to the rate R=1/2, memory m=2 (4-state) convolutional encoder with generator matrix G(D)=(1+D^2 1+D+D^2) by Lentmaier et al. In this paper, a different approach to derive the exact bit error probability is described. A general recurrent matrix equation, connecting the average information weight at the current and previous states of a trellis section of the Viterbi decoder, is derived and solved. The general solution of this matrix equation yields a closed form expression for the exact bit error probability. As special cases, the expressions obtained by Best et al. for the 2-state encoder and by Lentmaier et al. for a 4-state encoder are obtained. The closed form expression derived in this paper is evaluated for various realizations of encoders, including rate R=1/2 and R=2/3 encoders, of as many as 16 states. Moreover, it is shown that it is straightforward to extend the approach to communication over the quantized additive white Gaussian noise channel., Comment: 9 pages, 9 figures, submitted to IEEE Transactions on Information Theory in November 2011, revised version

The relation between parity-check matrices of quasi-cyclic (QC) low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes and biadjacency matrices of bipartite graphs supports searching for powerful LDPC block codes. Using the principle of tailbiting, compact representations of bipartite graphs based on convolutional codes can be found. Bounds on the girth and the minimum distance of LDPC block codes constructed in such a way are discussed. Algorithms for searching iteratively for LDPC block codes with large girth and for determining their minimum distance are presented. Constructions based on all-ones matrices, Steiner Triple Systems, and QC block codes are introduced. Finally, new QC regular LDPC block codes with girth up to 24 are given., Comment: Submitted to IEEE Transactions on Information Theory in February 2011

Constructions of woven graph codes based on constituent block and convolutional codes are studied. It is shown that within the random ensemble of such codes based on $s$-partite, $s$-uniform hypergraphs, where $s$ depends only on the code rate, there exist codes satisfying the Varshamov-Gilbert (VG) and the Costello lower bound on the minimum distance and the free distance, respectively. A connection between regular bipartite graphs and tailbiting codes is shown. Some examples of woven graph codes are presented. Among them an example of a rate $R_{\rm wg}=1/3$ woven graph code with $d_{\rm free}=32$ based on Heawood's bipartite graph and containing $n=7$ constituent rate $R^{c}=2/3$ convolutional codes with overall constraint lengths $\nu^{c}=5$ is given. An encoding procedure for woven graph codes with complexity proportional to the number of constituent codes and their overall constraint length $\nu^{c}$ is presented., Comment: Submitted to IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory