Scalable and low power LDPC decoder design using high level algorithmic synthesis

This paper presents a scalable and low power low-density parity-check (LDPC) decoder design for the next generation wireless handset SoC. The methodology is based on high level synthesis: PICO (program-in chip-out) tool was used to produce efficient RTL directly from a sequential un-timed C algorithm. We propose two parallel LDPC decoder architectures: (1) per-layer decoding architecture with scalable parallelism, and (2) multi-layer pipelined decoding architecture to achieve higher throughput. Based on the PICO technology, we have implemented a two-layer pipelined decoder on a TSMC 65 nm 0.9 V 8-metal layer CMOS technology with a core area of 1.2 mm². The maximum achievable throughput is 415 Mbps when operating at 400 MHz clock frequency and the estimated peak power consumption is 180 mW.