A Two-Stage Decoding Algorithm to Lower the Error-Floors for LDPC Codes

A two-stage decoding algorithm to lower the error-floor for low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes is presented. An efficient stopping criterion is proposed to avoid unnecessary iterations in the first stage. If the stopping criterion is reached, the first stage decoding will be terminated and the second stage decoding will be started, where the unsuccessfully decoded words are re-decoded by manipulating the log-likelihood ratio (LLR) of two types of specifically selected variable nodes. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can effectively lower the error floor of LDPC codes while maintaining a low decoding complexity.