Design of rate-compatible structured LDPC codes for hybrid ARQ applications

• Published in: IEEE journal on selected areas in communications Vol. 27; no. 6; pp. 965 - 973
• Main Authors: El-Khamy, M., Jilei Hou, Bhushan, N.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01-08-2009; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Algorithms; Automatic repeat request; Channel capacity; Channel coding; channel coding for wireless applications; Channels; Construction; Decoding; Design engineering; Error correction codes; Errors; hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ); Low density parity check (LDPC) codes; Negative feedback; Noise levels; Parity check codes; Piercing; progressive puncturing; progressive-edge growth (PEG); protographs; rate compatible error correcting codes; Redundancy; Robustness; Transmitters
• ISSN: 0733-8716; 1558-0008
• DOI: 10.1109/JSAC.2009.090814

In this paper, families of rate-compatible protograph-based LDPC codes that are suitable for incrementalredundancy hybrid ARQ applications are constructed. A systematic technique to construct low-rate base codes from a higher rate code is presented. The base codes are designed to be robust against erasures while having a good performance on error channels. A progressive node puncturing algorithm is devised to construct a family of higher rate codes from the base code. The performance of this puncturing algorithm is compared to other puncturing schemes. Using the techniques in this paper, one can construct a rate-compatible family of codes with rates ranging from 0.1 to 0.9 that are within 1 dB from the channel capacity and have good error floors.