In this paper we explore the decision regions of Linear Programming (LP) decoding. We compare the decision regions of an LP decoder, a Belief Propagation (BP) decoder and the optimal Maximum Likelihood (ML) decoder. We study the effect of minimal-weight pseudocodewords on LP decoding. We present global optimization as a method for finding the minimal pseudoweight of a given code as well as the number of minimal-weight generators. We present a complete pseudoweight distribution for the [24, 12, 8] extended Golay code, and provide justifications of why the pseudoweight distribution alone cannot be used for obtaining a tight upper bound on the error probability.

We propose several improvements for Linear Programming (LP) decoding algorithms for High Density Parity Check (HDPC) codes. First, we use the automorphism groups of a code to create parity check matrix diversity and to generate valid cuts from redundant parity checks. Second, we propose an efficient mixed integer decoder utilizing the branch and bound method. We further enhance the proposed decoders by removing inactive constraints and by adapting the parity check matrix prior to decoding according to the channel observations. Based on simulation results the proposed decoders achieve near-ML performance with reasonable complexity.