Constructing Large Girth QC Protograph LDPC Codes Based on PSD-PEG Algorithm

For a given base graph, the lifted graph can be obtained by a copy-and-permute procedure. If the permutation is cyclic, the lifted graph corresponds to a quasi-cyclic (QC) protograph low-density parity-check (LDPC) code. The girth of the QC protograph LDPC code is determined by the girth of the base graph and the permutation shifts. In this paper, we first derive a lower bound on the lifting degree to achieve a large girth lifted graph. Then, motivated by the cycle searching and girth maximizing features of the progressive edge-growth (PEG) algorithm, we introduce the permutation shifts determining (PSD) PEG algorithm, which can construct large girth base graph and determine the optimal permutation shifts, simultaneously. It is shown that the computational complexity of PSD-PEG algorithm is much lower than that of the PEG algorithm and the PEG-QC algorithm for the same codeword length. Furthermore, we show that the PSD-PEG algorithm can also be used to construct nonbinary QC protograph LDPC codes without low weight codes. Simulation results show that the binary and nonbinary QC protograph LDPC codes constructed by the PSD-PEG algorithm have good bit error rate performance and frame error rate performance over the additive white Gaussian noise channel.