This application claims priority under 35 U.S.C. § 119 to an application entitled “Method of Constructing QC-LDPC Codes Using Qth-Order Power Residue” filed in the Korean Intellectual Property Office on Nov. 8, 2003 and assigned Serial No. 2003-78869, the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to channel coding in a digital communication system, and in particular, to a method of constructing advanced LDPC (Low Density Parity Check) codes.
2. Description of the Related Art
LDPC codes have attracted a great deal of interest as a suitable coding scheme for a fourth generation (4G) mobile communication system due to superior performance and lower decoding complexity than turbo codes and parallel implementation.
An LDPC code is defined by a random sparse parity-check matrix H having a low density of Is. The matrix H is used to determine if a received signal has been decoded normally. If the product of the coded received signal and the matrix H is zero, it is determined that no errors have occurred. Therefore, the LDPC code is constructed by first designing a parity-check matrix that produces zero for every coded received signal by multiplication and then reversing a coding operation based on the matrix in an encoder of a transmitter.
The parity-check matrix H is designed such that the following constraints are satisfied: (1) each row has the same weight of k; (2) each column has the same weight of j (j is usually 3 or 4); and (3) any two columns have an overlap of at most 1. Here, a weight refers to the number of elements other than 0, that is, the number of elements having a value of 1, and the overlap between two columns refers to the inner product between rows. Therefore, the row weight and the column weight are very small relative to the code length.
The LDPC code can be decoded using an iterative decoding algorithm based on a sum-product algorithm on its factor graph. The use of the iterative decoding algorithm offers a lower complexity to an LDPC decoder than a turbo decoder and facilitates implementation of a parallel LDPC decoder.
Despite its excellent performance, however, the LDPC code has a distinctive shortcoming of very high code complexity relative to the turbo code. Basically being a block code, the LDPC code is formed by matrix multiplication and thus the code complexity is proportional to the square of a codeword length.
An LDPC coding routine derives a generation matrix through Gaussian elimination of a parity-check matrix and performs matrix multiplication. Because a low density of 1s is not maintained in the process of the LDPC coding, coding complexity considerably increases. While a coding algorithm for minimizing the volume of computation proportional to the square of a code length has been proposed along with other coding algorithms, which attempt to reduce the coding complexity, an encoder structure or a coding algorithm that remarkably reduces the coding complexity is yet to be developed. Accordingly, there is a pressing need for an LDPC encoder that reduces the coding complexity and operates in a coding scheme suitable for the next-generation mobile communication system.
Therefore, the present invention has been designed to substantially solve at least the above problems and/or disadvantages and to provide at least the advantages below. Accordingly, an object of the present invention is to provide an encoding method for efficiently generating an LDPC code.
Another object of the present invention is to provide an encoding method for greatly reducing coding complexity and offering an optimum coding gain.
A further object of the present invention is to provide an encoding method for reducing a small cycle length in designing a parity-check matrix to increase independence in iterative decoding and thus, increase performance.
Still another object of the present invention is to provide an encoding method for reducing a coding time delay through parallel coding of blocks.
Yet another object of the present invention is to provide an encoding method for generating a codeword with a variable coding rate and a variable length using a single hardware structure.
The above and other objects are achieved by providing an LDPC encoding method in a digital communication system. In the LDPC encoding method, a parity-check matrix H having a plurality of circulant matrices as elements is first generated. A generation matrix G is generated using the parity-check matrix. Next, information bits are encoded using the generation matrix G.
The above and other objects, features, and advantages of the present invention will become more apparent from the following detailed description when taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings in which:
Preferred embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail herein below with reference to the accompanying drawings. In the following description, well-known functions or constructions are not described in detail because they would obscure the invention in unnecessary detail.
The present invention pertains to designing an encoder for generating an error correction code, i.e., an LDPC code, in a digital communication system. The LDPC encoder is designed such that similar performance as that of a conventional encoder can be achieved by efficiently performing a coding operation using shift registers, which is traditionally done by matrix computation. The LDPC encoder creates a QC (Quasi Cyclic)-LDPC code having m×n circulant matrix blocks. A computation between circulant matrices in the QC-LDPC code has an algebraic property that it can be replaced with an equivalent polynomial computation. Therefore, the LDPC encoder is easy to realize.
The present invention provides a method of equivalently describing each circulant matrix block by polynomials using qth-order residues, as a uniform LDPC code having the above configuration. The inventive LDPC encoding method easily generates an LDPC code with a variable coding rate and a variable length through puncturing or shortening and can be efficiently applied as a channel coding scheme for the future-generation communication system or a storage device, which requires high-speed signal transmission.
In accordance with the present invention, a check matrix H for an LDPC code has m×n blocks, each being a circulant matrix. The circulant matrix is of a pxp size, where p is a prime number. The check matrix H is generalized in Equation (1).
Each circulant matrix Hij can be equivalently described by Equation (1a):
and computation between circulant matrices is replaced by polynomial computation.
This LDPC code comprised of circulant matrices is quasi cyclic. That is, one LDPC codeword is changed to another LDPC codeword by an n-bit shift. Each circulant matrix in the LDPC code can be expressed as a matrix of polynomials using qth-order power residue classes according to Equation (2):
where (a, −a) is set forth in Equation (2a):
(a, −a):=xa+Xp-a (2a)
The LDPC code is uniform according to the present invention. Because the uniform LDPC code optimally performs for a column weight of 3, the LDPC code is configured to have a column weight of 3 in Equation (3).
Here, the number of polynomial terms is set to 2 or less, which implies that the number of Is in the first row in each circulant matrix block is 2 or less.
In Equation (3), the weight of polynomials hi,kj+i(x) (1≦i≦m, 0≦k) is 2 and the weight of the other polynomials is 1.
The above LDPC code has a parity-check matrix H, which is modified to a systematic matrix H′.
In step S202, circulant matrices are formed. Each circulant matrix is an equivalent polynomial matrix derived using a (p−1)/2th-order power residue (or a (p−1)/2-th power residue), that is, (1, −1), and non-residues. If the circulant matrix is an m×n matrix, the polynomial of each row/column block is determined from the power residue by Equation (2). Here, α is a primitive root of a finite field GF(p). That is, a polynomial is formed by sequentially arranging a power residue and a non-residue. (α, −α) is defined as a polynomial xa+xp-a.
After forming the circulant matrices, the parity-check matrix H with a column weight of 3 is formed by selecting a weight distribution for each circulant matrix according to Equation (3) in step S203. The polynomial weight is 0, 1, or 2 in each circulant matrix, and the polynomials determined by Equation (2) are punctured according to a new polynomial weight.
When the uniform parity-check matrix H having the column weight of 3 is formed, a systematic encoder is configured through a generation matrix in step S204. The left square matrix in the parity-check matrix H has an inverse matrix all the time. Thus, H can be changed to H′=[I |P] by row computation. The systematic matrix H′ is expressed in Equation (4).
Using Equation (4), a systematic encoder can be designed to have a generation matrix G=[PT|I] and encoding is performed by polynomial multiplication instead of matrix multiplication. Here, k=n-m, which indicates the size of an information symbol block.
In step S205, encoding is performed in the thus-constituted systematic encoder. A total information vector length is pk and encoding is performed on the basis of k blocks, each having p information vectors.
Information vectors m=[m1, m2 . . . , mk] can be represented as m(x)=[m1(x), m2(x) . . . , mk(x)], which is equivalent to a polynomial modular xp−1 on a finite field GF(2). Therefore, a codeword c=mG can be achieved as shown in Equation (4a):
c(x)=m(x)G(x)=[p(x), m(x)]=[p1(x, P2(x), . . . , pm(x), m1(x), . . . , m2 (x), . . . , mk(x)] (5)
cshortened(x)=m′(x)Gshortened(x)=[p′(x), m′(x)]=[p1′(x), p2′(x), . . . , pm′(x), m1(x), m2(x), . . . , mk, (x)] (6)
As described above, in accordance with the encoding method of the present invention, a generation matrix is formed in the form of a block matrix having circulant matrices as its elements. Matrix multiplication between circulant matrices can be performed by an equivalent polynomial multiplication. As a result, encoding can be efficiently performed using shift registers.
Additionally, a short cycle is remarkably reduced in forming a parity-check matrix, thereby increasing independency in iterative decoding and thus improving performance.
Also, because encoding is performed through block-by-block parallel processing, a coding time delay can be shortened.
Further, codewords with various coding rates and various code lengths can be generated by use of a single hardware structure.
Accordingly, an LDPC code generated according to the present invention offers almost a comparable decoding performance as the conventional random LDPC code, but is improved in that it has a lower coding complexity.
While the present invention has been shown and described with reference to certain preferred embodiments thereof, it will be understood by those skilled in the art that various changes in form and details may be made therein without departing from the spirit and scope of the present invention as defined by the appended claims.
Number | Date | Country | Kind |
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78869/2003 | Nov 2003 | KR | national |