A new LDPC decoder hardware implementation with improved error rates

Abstract

LDPC codes are commonly decoded by conventional belief propagation algorithms like the min-sum algorithm. However especially for small block lengths belief propagation performs poorly in comparison to maximum likelihood decoding. In this paper we propose a new decoding algorithm, that is inspired by augmented belief propagation from literature and present hardware architectures and implementations for 28nm ASIC technology. The new decoder has a much higher complexity, but provides a gain of up to 1.2 dB signal-to-noise ratio compared to conventional belief propagation decoding.