Energy-Efficient Decoding of Spatially Coupled Low-Density Parity-Check Codes using Adaptive Window Sizes

Wireless communication systems require high error correction capability, increasing data rates, lower round-trip latency, and efficient silicon implementation. Low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes have gained popularity as a class of forward error correction codes due to their ability to approach channel capacity for large block sizes. However, high-throughput decoding implementation is limited to small block sizes and few iterations. Spatially coupled LDPC (SC-LDPC) codes can outperform standard LDPC codes from an error correction perspective and exhibit locality in the Tanner graph by coupling small LDPC block codes (LDPC-BCs). This enables a sliding window decoding (SWD) decoding and, thus, overcomes the limitation of small block sizes. In this paper, we present a new SWD decoding algorithm and its decoder implementation in a 22 nm technology. The new decoder is based on an adaptive window size yielding power savings up to a factor of 4 in the high SNR range compared to the state-of-the-art.