International Journal for Electro Computational World Knowledge Interface Vol. 1, Issue 4, Dec 2011, ISSN No.

2249-541X

A Survey on LDPC Decoding

Techniques
Varsha Vimal Sood1, Dr. H.P.Sinha2, Alka Kalra3

1
ECE Dept., HIET,Kaithal-136027, Haryana, India,
2
Dr.H.P.Sinha, Professor, ECE Dept., MMEC, MMU,Mullana-144003,Ambala,Haryana, India,
3
ECE Dept., HCTM,Kaithal-136027, Haryana, India
1
varsha.vimal@gmail.com
2
drhpsinha@gmail.com
3
kalra_alka30@yahoo.co.in

Abstract— Error correcting codes are the most
important tools for reliable communication in any
noisy communication channel. LDPC code is a
linear error-correcting code that has a parity check
matrix with small number of nonzero elements in
each row and column. LDPC codes are one of the
best performing channel coding schemes, as they
can theoretically reach Shannon’s limit The main
advantage of LDPC codes is that they provide
better bit error rate (BER) performance for
different channels. LDPC codes are gaining
increased attention in communication standards
due to their linear decoding complexity and
capacity achieving performance. The high
definition television (HDTV) satellite standard,
known as Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB-S2)
transmission system standard includes irregular
LDPC codes. They are also strong contenders for
coding in 4G wireless systems and hard disk drives
.In this paper decoding algorithms used for LDPC
decoding Soft-decision, hard-decision and hybrid
decoding have been discussed and compared.
Index Terms—LDPC, BF, SPA, WBF, IMWBF
I. INTRODUCTION
The LDPC codes were first introduced by
Gallager in his PhD thesis in 1960[15]. An LDPC
code is a linear error-correcting code that has
a parity check matrix H with small number of
nonzero elements in each row and
column. Although LDPC codes can be defined
over any finite field, the majority of research is
focused on LDPC codes over GF(2), in which "1"
is the only nonzero element. The code is the set
of vectors x such that Hx' = 0[13]. The main
advantage of LDPC codes is that they provide a
performance which is very close to the capacity
for a lot of different channels and linear time
complex algorithms for decoding. They are also
suited for implementations that make heavy use
of parallelism. Low-density parity-check (LDPC)
codes are used by high-speed communication
systems due to their near Shannon limit error-
correcting capability. To achieve the desired bit
error rate (BER), longer LDPC codes with higher
code rate are preferred in practice. There have
been simulations that perform within 0.04 dB of
the Shannon limit at a bit error rate of 10 −6 with a
block length of 107. An interesting fact is that
those high performance codes are irregular.
LDPC allows for the reliable transmission, or
storage, of data in noisy environments. Even
short codes provide a substantial coding gain over
un-coded or low complexity coded systems.
These results allows for lower transmission
power, transmission over noisier channels, with
the same, if not better reliability. The LDPC
codes were forgotten for a long time owing to
their computational and decoding complexity
until their rediscovery by MacKay and Neal
[14]. In recent years, iterative decoding of low-
density parity-check (LDPC) codes has received
much attention [9][16]. The standard belief-
propagation (BP) decoding which is based on soft
decision decoding can achieve excellent
performance but often with heavy
implementation complexity. Bit-flipping (BF)
decoding is simple, but it often incurs
considerable performance loss compared to the
BP decoding [10-11]. To bridge the performance
gap between hard decision decoding and soft
decision decoding, weighted BF (WBF) decoding
[12] and its variants were proposed [1-8][17].
The improved version of the modified WBF

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International Journal for Electro Computational World Knowledge Interface Vol. 1, Issue 4, Dec 2011, ISSN No. 2249-541X
algorithm proposed by Jiang et al, referred to as
IMWBF, performs best so far when compared
with the other variants of BF [8]. In this paper,
we review the various types of hard and soft
decision decoding techniques like the BF and its
variants, SPA and min-sum algorithms. For some
high-rate LDPC codes of large row weight it is
shown in[7] that the LP-WBF algorithm and its
improved version perform extraordinarily well.
Unfortunately, its dual message-passing decoding
does not work well. Compared to serial
implementations, various WBF algorithms in
their parallel form converge significantly faster
and often perform better [8].
II. CLASSIFICATION OF LDPC CODES
Channel coding is a way of introducing
controlled redundancy into a transmitted binary
data stream in order to increase the reliability of
transmission and lower power transmission
requirements. Channel coding is carried out by
introducing redundant parity bits into the
transmitted information stream. The requirement
of a channel coding scheme only exists because
of the noise introduced in the channel. Simple
channel coding schemes allow the received
transmitted data signal to detect errors, while
more advanced channel coding schemes provide
the ability to recover a finite details about of
corrupted data. This results in more reliable
communication, and in many cases, eliminates
the need for retransmission. Although channel
coding provides many benefits, there is an
increase in the number of bits being transmitted.
This is important when selecting the best channel
coding scheme to achieve the required bit error
rate for a system.
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LDPC codes can be classified in two categories,
regular and irregular LDPC codes. A regular
LDPC code is characterized by two values:
and is the number of ones in each column
of the parity check matrix H , represents the
number of ones in each row. A LDPC code is
called regular if is constant for every column
regular and = · (n/m) is also constant for
every row. There are two different rates in LDPC
codes. The true rate is the normal rate: R = K/N.
The second rate is called as design rate: Rd = 1 -
/ The relation between those two rates is:
R >Rd. An irregular LDPC code is a code with
different numbers of ones in each row and
columns. They are known to be better than the
regular one.
A. LDPC Encoding
The encoding of LDPC is similar to that of any
linear block codes for which a generator matrix
(G) and parity check matrix (H) are defined. In
order to achieve a systematic LDPC code, G must
be in the following form G [I P]k Where I k is an
identity matrix and P defines the parity bits. In
some cases, a code may be specified by only the
H matrix and it becomes necessary to solve for
the G matrix. The H matrix is often in an
arbitrary format, it must be converted into
canonical form [ ] n k .H =[PT I ] ,where I n−k is
an identity matrix and defines the parity bits .
Typically, encoding consists of using the G
matrix to compute the parity bits and decoding
consists of using the H matrix and soft-decision
decoding. In the encoding stage, the main task is
identifying the fixed bits position. As in the
systematic LDPC codes, the value of the
transmission codeword is the same with the value
of the H matrix‟s message word.
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B. LDPC Decoding
Soft-decision, hard-decision and hybrid decoding
algorithms have been proposed for decoding
LDPC codes. The decoding algorithms proposed
by Gallager had two common features. Firstly,
based on the observed channel output, these
algorithms tried to iteratively find the codeword
that was sent over the channel. Secondly, these
algorithms operated locally in the sense that they
combined partial information that could then be
used in other partial-information combining.
Hard decision decoding
1. Simple decoder construction
2. Input values are not considering the channel
information
3. Bit flipping algorithms
4. Faster convergence with significant impact on
error correcting characteristics
Soft decision decoding
1. Complicated decoder construction
2. Channel information is considered in decoding
process
3. Message passing algorithms
4. Slow converging, but more powerful methods
of decoding
(i)Hard Decision Decoding: The hard-decision
decoding algorithm is simple, , fast and their
hardware implementations are easy. Major
drawback of this algorithm is that it operates on
hard decisions made by the decoder at the
channel output. This throws away valuable
information coming from the channel especially
when we are dealing with continuous-output
channels.
Bit Flip Decoding- Bit-flipping (BF) decoding
algorithm is a hard-decision decoding algorithm
which is much simpler than the soft decision
decoding techniques like the Sum-Product
Algorithm (SPA) or its modifications but does
not perform as well. To reduce the performance
gap between SPA and BF based decoders,
variants of the latter such as weighted bit-flipping
(WBF) and improved modified bit-flipping
(IMWBF) algorithms have been proposed. They
provide tradeoffs between computational
complexity and error performance.
Algorithm for Bit Flipping decoding:
1. Define parity-check equations from control
matrix H
2. Based on parity-check equations define
evaluation metrics
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3. Results of this metrics defines a set of bits to
be flipped
4. Flip the values of selected bits
5. Check the result and proceed to next iteration
Weighted bit-flipping algorithm
The standard WBF algorithm initially finds the
most unreliable message node participating in
each individual check. Since the magnitude of the
received soft value determines the reliability of
the hard decision the least reliable message
node‟s magnitude for each individual check
during the algorithm‟s initialization step is given
by:
…(1)
where denotes the absolute value, i.e. the
magnitude, of the nth message node‟s soft value,
while is the lowest magnitude of all
message nodes participating in the mth check.
Description: The WBF algorithm smoothes the
difference between simple BF and soft decoding.
The main advantage of WBF is that it is simple.
As the BF algorithm it too is based on the
iterative approach.
Algorithm:
1.It Flips only that bit of codeword, for which
metric:
…(2)
achieves the maximum value. The algorithm
achieves slow convergence due to flipping of
only one bit per iteration.
2. Count syndrome components for all check
nodes:
…(3)
3. Count evaluation metrics for each bit of
received codeword:
(4)
4. Flip the bit with highest value of En.
5. Check the final codeword and proceed to next
iteration.
The WBF algorithm involves three steps: (1) The
bit sequence obtained by hard decision is
multiplied with the transpose of the PCM, and the
resultant syndrome vector is derived.(2) For
each message node at position n, the WBF
algorithm computes the error-term En. En is used
to quantify the probability that the bit at position
n would be flipped. In the next step of the WBF
algorithm, the bit having the highest error term
En will be deemed the least reliable bit and hence
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flipped. The foregoing three steps are repeated,
until an all-zero syndrome vector s is obtained, or
the maximum affordable number of iterations has
been reached. Compared to serial
implementations, various WBF algorithms in
their parallel form converge significantly faster
and often perform better. So far, various reported
WBF algorithms suffer from slow convergence,
mainly due to their serial flipping strategy. To
accelerate the rate of convergence, multiple bits
should be allowed for flipping in each iteration.
The weighted bit-flipping (WBF) algorithm
strikes a good trade-off between the associated
decoding complexity and the achievable
performance. The attractive property of the WBF
algorithm is that during each iteration the
weighted sum of the same values is computed,
resulting in a significantly lower decoding in
comparison to the SPA.
The drawback of WBF algorithm is that it
attributes the violation of a particular parity check
to only the least reliable bit. Also if the weighting
factor utilized in the I-WBF algorithm is not
optimum, the BER performance may be
significantly degraded. The problem of
convergence is significantly reduced by
introducing parallelization in the WBF.
Improved weighted bit-flipping algorithm
As seen the WBF algorithm only considers the
check-node based information during the
evaluation of the error-term En. By contrast, the
I-WBF algorithm enhances the performance of
the WBF algorithm, since it considers both the
check-node based and the message-node based
information during the evaluation of En. When
the error-term En is high, the corresponding bit is
likely to be an erroneous bit and hence ought to
be flipped. However, when the soft-value of a
certain bit is high, the message node itself is
demonstrating some confidence that the
corresponding bit should not be flipped. Hence
the above equation is modified as:
…(5)
considers the extra information provided by
the message node itself, thus a message node
having a higher soft-value magnitude has a lower
chance of being flipped, despite having a high
error term En owing to encountering unreliable
parity checks. We note however that for LDPC
codes having different column weights, or
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operating at different SNRs, we should weight
the effect of the soft-value differently.
Since I-WBF considers both the check-node
based and the message-node based information
during the evaluation of En, it enhances the
performance of the WBF algorithm. As the WBF
the I-WBF algorithm also attribute the violation
of a particular parity check to only the least
reliable bit. Thus in this contribution, the BER
performance of the I-WBF algorithm is further
improved by using more sophisticated bit-
flipping, while avoiding any preprocessing such
as finding the optimal weighting factor a of the I-
WBF algorithm.
The disadvantage of the I-WBF algorithm is that
the optimum value has to be found specifically
for each particular column weight and its value
should be optimized for each individual SNR .
Furthermore, both the WBF and the I-WBF
algorithms consider only the specific check-node
based information, which relies on the message
node having the lowest soft-value . However,
all message nodes participating in the mth parity
check are contributing, i.e. all message nodes
might be liable to change, if the check they
participate in is violated. However, for two
different message nodes participating in the same
violated parity check, the probability that the
check is violated owing to the message node
having a high soft magnitude is lower than that
associated with the message node having a low
soft magnitude. The performance of the decoder
improves significantly by introducing the
parallelization feature in WBF.
Parallel Weighted Bit Flipping (PWBF)
The Parallel Weighted Bit Flip improves the
WBF algorithms in the way of convergence time
and number of iterations. It also introduces the
ability of parallel flipping of several bits in one
iterations. Parallelization allows improving speed
of decoding and even improving overall
performance of decoder.
PWBF Algorithm:
1. Count syndrome component for each parity –
check equation
2. Count the metric from WBF algorithm for each
bit of received codeword
3. Each unsatisfied parity–check equation “votes”
for one bit to be flipped
4. If the number of votes for particular bit
exceeds the threshold, this bit is flipped
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5. All bits are flipped in parallel
The major advantage of PWBF algorithm over
the above mentioned techniques is that the overall
performance of the decoder increases due to
increase in speed and convergence time.
(ii)Soft Decision Decoding:
Soft decision decoding algorithms have better
BER performance. In the soft-decision decoding
algorithm, sum-product and min-sum algorithm
are studied and expounded. The message passing
algorithm operates in the factor graph and
computes the marginal functions associated with
the global code constraint. The message passing
algorithm exchange the extrinsic messages along
the edges of the factor graph. At the nodes, local
decoding operations update the extrinsic
messages according to the message update rules.
The messages can be either in terms of
probabilities or L-values. The sum-product
algorithm is symbol-wise decoding whereas min-
sum algorithm is block-wise decoding. However,
the performance of the sum-product algorithm is
better (lower word error rate) than the min-sum
algorithm for fixed SNR. The min-sum algorithm
can be considered as an approximation of the
sum-product algorithm. If the factor graph is
cycle free, then the message passing algorithm
will be optimal (maximum likelihood) otherwise
sub-optimal.
Sum-Product Algorithm(SPA)
The sum-product algorithm is a common form of
the message-passing algorithm. The algorithm
uses the channel information and the values
coming from the channel. It forms a probabilistic
value for each received bit and iteratively
refreshes this value to find an estimate for that
bit. Variable-to-check and check-to-variable
messages are computed using the following
equations:
)=∑ )+ ( ) … (6)
)= ( )X(
…(7)
is referred to as the variable-to-check
message is a message sent by the variable node
to the check node . Every message contains
always the pair (0) and (1) which stands
for the amount of belief that is a ”0” or a ”1”.
is the check-to-variable message sent by the
check node to the variable node Again there
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is a (0) and (1) that indicates the (current)
amount of believe in that is a ”0” or a ”1”.
Φ(x) = − log(tanh(1/2x)), x≥0 …(8)
The messages and and, respectively, that
are passed between the ith variable node and the
jth check node. In representing the connectivity
of the factor graph, Col[i]refers to the set of all
the check nodes adjacent to the ith variable node
and Row[ j] refers to the set of all the variable
nodes adjacent the jth check node. The posterior
LLR is computed in each iteration using the
update
. …(9)
A hard decision is made based on the posterior
LLR in every iteration. The iterative decoding
algorithm is allowed to run until the hard
decisions satisfy all the parity check equations or
when an upper limit on the iteration number is
reached, whichever occurs earlier. In the sum-
product algorithm (and other message-passing
algorithms) the messages that a variable node
sends to its neighboring check nodes represent its
belief about its value together with a reliability
measure. Similarly, the message that a check
node sends to a neighboring variable node is a
belief about the value of that variable node
together with some reliability measure. In a sum-
product decoder a variable node receives the
beliefs that all the neighboring check nodes have
about it. The variable node processes these
messages (in this case a simple summation) and
sends its updated belief about itself back to the
neighboring check nodes. It can be understood
that the reliability of messages at a variable node
increases as it receives a number of (mostly
correct) beliefs about itself. This is very similar to
a repetition code which receives multiple beliefs
for a single bit from the channel and hence is able
to make a more reliable decision. The main task
of a check node is to force its neighbors to satisfy
an even parity. So, for a neighboring variable
node v, it processes the beliefs of other
neighboring variable nodes about themselves and
sends a message to v, which indicates the belief
of this check node about v. The sign of this
message is chosen to force an even parity check
and its magnitude depends on the reliability of
the other incoming messages. Therefore, similar
to a variable node, an outgoing message from a
check node is due to the processing of all the
incoming edges except the one which receives the
outgoing message. However, unlike a variable
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node, a check node receives the belief of all the
neighboring variable nodes about their own
values. As a result, the reliability of the outgoing
message is even less than that of the least reliable
incoming message. In other words, the reliability
of messages decreases at the check nodes. So, in
simple words, at a check node we force the
neighboring variable nodes to satisfy an even
parity check at the expense of losing reliability in
the messages, but at a variable node we
strengthen the reliabilities. This process is
repeated iteratively to clear the errors introduced
by the channel.
The sum-product algorithm (SPA) achieves
the near-capacity performance asymptotically
The Sum-product algorithm makes use of the soft
received signal, which is vital when continuous-
output channels are used. However, the
computational complexity of the sum-product
algorithm (SPA) is very high. The Sum-Product
Algorithm for decoding LDPC codes is hard to
implement in practice, since it requires nonlinear
functions and multiplications. To reduce the
computational complexity of the SPA, instead of
taking L an approximation of it is taken
which simplifies the update rule at the check
node. This modified version of SPA is known as
the Min-Sum algorithm.
Min-sum algorithm:
The min-sum algorithm (MSA) which replaces
the nonlinear check node operation by a single
minimum operation was proposed to reduce the
complexity of the standard SPA at the cost of a
noticeable degradation in the decoding
performance. In the min-sum algorithm, the
update rule at a variable node is the same as the
sum-product algorithm, but the update rule at a
check node c is simplified by taking
term instead of L which is actually the
approximation of the latter. The magnitude of
L computed using min-sum approximation is
usually overestimated and correction terms are
introduced to reduce the approximation error.
This approximation becomes more accurate as
the magnitude of the messages is increased. So in
later iterations, when the magnitude of the
messages is usually large, the performance of this
algorithm is almost the same as that of the sum-
product algorithm. The Min-Sum algorithm is
less complex to implement, it requires
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approximately an additional 0.5dB of signal-to-
noise ratio Eb/N0 to achieve the same bit error
rate as the Sum-Product algorithm, when using a
regular LDPC code for transmission over an
additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel
with binary input. For irregular codes, the loss in
performance can be up to 1.0dB.
III. CONCLUSION
LDPC codes are one of the best performing
channel coding schemes, as they can theoretically
reach Shannon‟s limit . LDPC codes can be
thought of as a generic term for a class of error
correcting codes distinguished from others by a
very sparse parity-check matrix. LDPC
performance improves as block length increases,
so they can theoretically achieve Shannon‟s limit
as block length goes to infinity. We have
discussed LDPC decoding algorithms and their
comparison. Hard decision decoding algorithms
are simple, fast and their hardware
implementations are easy but the input values do
not consider the channel information. Next
generation of optical communication systems are
operating at 40 Gb/s. The current circuit
technology does not allow soft decision decoding
algorithms to operate at these data rates. A Soft
decision decoder often needs several tens or
hundreds of serial iterations for the iterative
decoding process to converge, which is not
always realistic for high speed communications
because of high decoding delay. Second, because
of the nature of its decoding, it can become too
complex for hardware implementation. As
compared to the hard decision decoding
algorithm, these give better performance since the
channel information is considered in the decoding
process. It is also more powerful method of
decoding the LDPC codes. However depending
upon the application one can choose the most
suitable technique out of the two categories of
hard and soft decision decoding.
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