A general decoding framework for high-rate LDPC codes

This paper presents a hardware solution to the design of general low-density parity-check (LDPC) decoders, which simplifies the delivery network required by the message passing algorithm. While many designs of LDPC decoders for specific classes of codes exist in the literature, the design of a general LDPC decoder capable of supporting random LDPC codes is still challenging. The method proposed in this paper tries to pack different check node (CN) and variable node (VN) messages in the Tanner graph representation of the LDPC code, and is therefore called message packing. This method takes advantage of the fact that for high-rate LDPC's the CN's degree is much larger than the VN's, and two distinct methods for delivering the messages to the CNs and VNs are proposed. Using the proposed interconnection network (IN) results in lower complexity decoding of LDPC codes when compared to other designs.