We analyze the trade-off between the undetected error probability (i.e., the probability that the channel decoder outputs an erroneous message without detecting the error) and the total error probability in the short blocklength regime. We address the problem by developing two new finite blocklength achievability bounds, which we use to benchmark the performance of two coding schemes based on polar codes with outer cyclic redundancy check (CRC) codes—also referred to as CRC-aided (CA) polar codes. The first bound is obtained by considering an outer detection code, whereas the second bound relies on a threshold test applied to the generalized information density. Similarly, in the first CA polar code scheme, we reserve a fraction of the outer CRC parity bits for error detection, whereas in the second scheme, we apply a threshold test (specifically, Forney’s optimal rule) to the output of the successive cancellation list decoder. Numerical simulations performed on the binary-input AWGN channel reveal that, in the short-blocklength regime, the threshold-based approach is superior to the CRC-based approach, both in terms of bounds and performance of CA polar code schemes. We also consider the case of decoding with noisy channel-state information, which leads to a mismatched decoding setting. Our results illustrate that, differently from the previous case, in this scenario, the CRC-based approach outperforms the threshold-based approach, which is more sensitive to the mismatch.

Rate-adaptive MacKay-Neal (MN) codes based on protographs are analyzed. The code construction employs an outer distribution matcher (DM) to adapt the rate of the scheme. The DM is coupled with an inner protograph-based low-density parity-check (LDPC) code. The performance achievable by the resulting code structure, that is nonlinear, is studied by means of an equivalent communication model that reduces the problem to the analysis of the inner (linear) LDPC code with transmission that takes place in parallel over the communication channel, and over a suitably defined binary symmetric channel. A density evolution analysis of protograph MN code ensembles is outlined, and it is complemented by an error floor analysis that relies on the derivation of the average input-output weight distribution of the inner LDPC code ensemble. Conditions on the shape of the normalized logarithmic asymptotic input-output weight distribution are defined, which allow discarding code ensembles with bad error floor properties during the code design phase. Examples of code designs are provided, showing how the use of a single LDPC code ensemble allows operating within 1 dB from the Shannon limit over a wide range of code rates, where the code rate is selected by tuning the DM parameters. By enabling rate flexibility with a constant blocklength, and with a fixed LDPC code as inner code, the construction provides an appealing solution for very high-throughput wireless (optical) links that employ binary-input modulations.

We investigate the performance of free-space optical communication systems in the presence of atmospheric turbulence to assess the advantages that a coherent communication system can bring with respect to a conventional intensity modulation and direct detection (IM/DD) system. The perspective is an information-theoretic one, hence we evaluate the mutual information and the corresponding outage probability of both channels, with various traditional symbol constellations, as a pragmatic approximation to the capacity, or to the outage capacity, of those channels. In addition, we analyze non-uniform symbol constellations to evaluate the possible shaping gain that can be achieved under different channel conditions. We propose a method to quantify the gain that the coherent solution can achieve, in terms of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), so that it can be compared, on a techno-economical basis, against the higher cost that it implies.

This work presents low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes with low error floors, close to capacity performance and highly efficient encoders targeting high throughput applications such as free-space optical downlinks from low earth orbit (LEO) satellites to ground. We devise a code design strategy to find suitable protograph LDPC code ensembles and discuss an field-programmable gate array (FPGA) implementation of the obtained codes. In addition to having competitive decoding performance, the proposed codes have advantages in terms of encoding complexity. An FPGA prototype highlights significant improvements in resource utilization by a factor of around 10 compared to standardized DVB-S2 and CCSDS solutions.

A class of rate-adaptive protograph MacKay-Neal (MN) codes is introduced and analyzed. The code construction employs an outer distribution matcher (DM) to adapt the rate of the scheme. The DM is coupled with an inner protograph-based low-density parity-check (LDPC) code, whose base matrix is optimized via density evolution analysis to approach the Shannon limit of the binary-input additive white Gaussian noise (biAWGN) channel over a given range of code rates. The density evolution analysis is complemented by finite-length simulations, and by a study of the error floor performance.

We consider a set reconciliation setting in which two parties hold similar sets that they would like to reconcile. In particular, we focus on set reconciliation based on invertible Bloom lookup tables (IBLTs), a probabilistic data structure inspired by Bloom filters. IBLT-based set reconciliation schemes have the advantage of exhibiting low computational complexity, however, the schemes available in the literature are known to be far from optimal in terms of communication complexity (overhead). The inefficiency of IBLT-based set reconciliation can be attributed to two facts. First, it requires an estimate of the cardinality of the difference between the sets, which implies an increase in overhead. Second, to cope with uncertainties in the estimation of the cardinality of the set difference, IBLT schemes in the literature oversize the data structures, thus further increasing the overhead. In this work, we present a novel IBLT-based set reconciliation protocol that does not require estimating the cardinality of the set difference. The proposed scheme relies on what we termed multi-edge-type (MET) IBLTs. The simulation results illustrate that the novel scheme outperforms state-of-the-art IBLT-based approaches to set reconciliation in terms of communication cost, i.e., in terms of the number of bits to be exchanged.

This work addresses physical layer design aspects of coherent free-space optical downlinks from low-earth orbit satellites to ground. Achievable information rates are derived and assessed that include the availability of diversity, shaping, bit-metric decoding, repetition coding and automatic repeat request with maximum-ratio combining. A channel coding scheme is presented that approaches the theoretic limits within 1 dB. Extrinsic information transfer analysis for the free-space optical fading channel shows that a code design tailored to the additive white Gaussian noise channel is robust for fading channels with various parameters.

A simple decoding algorithm, dubbed symbol message passing decoder, is studied for q-ary low-density parity-check codes over the q-ary Poisson pulse-position modulation channel. The messages in the decoder are symbols from the finite field ${\mathbb{F}_q}$. To improve performance, a second decoder with an extended message set $\left\{ {{\text{E}} \cup {\mathbb{F}_q}} \right\}$ is also investigated, where E denotes an erasure. Thresholds within 1.3 dB from the Shannon limit are obtained for low field orders.

We present a novel decoding algorithm for q-ary low-density parity- check codes, termed symbol message passing. The proposed algorithm can be seen as a generalization of Gallager B and the binary message passing algorithm by Lechner et al. to q-ary codes. We derive density evolution equations for the q-ary symmetric channel, compute thresholds for a number of regular low-density parity-check code ensembles, and verify those by Monte Carlo simulations of long channel codes. The proposed algorithm shows performance advantages with respect to an algorithm of comparable complexity from the literature.

This paper considers the design of short non-binary low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes over finite fields of order m, for channels with phase noise. In particular, m-ary differential phase-shift keying (DPSK)-modulated code symbols are transmitted over an additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel with the Wiener phase noise. At the receiver side, non-coherent detection takes place, with the help of a multi-symbol detection algorithm, followed by a non-binary decoding step. Both the detector and the decoder operate on a joint factor graph. As a benchmark, finite length bounds and information rate expressions are computed and compared with the codeword error rate (CER) performance, as well as the iterative threshold of the obtained codes. As a result, performance within 1.2 dB from finite-length bounds is obtained, down to a CER of 10-3.

In this paper, we present a low-density parity-check coded modulation approach addressing orthogonal modulations with moderate order (between 8 and 32) over the additive white Gaussian noise channel. The proposed design is based on a constrained optimization of a non-binary low-density parity-check ensemble degree distribution, where the iterative decoding threshold is optimized via extrinsic information transfer analysis while restricting the search to degree distributions that target low error floors. For various orthogonal modulation orders, we provide useful approximations to the extrinsic information transfer functions, which enable a fast optimization with respect to the iterative decoding threshold. The approach is validated via codeword error rate Monte Carlo simulations and complemented by an error floor analysis, showing gains up to 0.8 dB at a codeword error rate of 10-4with respect to existing designs, down to information block lengths as short as 192 bits.

In this paper, we study digital transmission over an additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel with mary differential phase-shift keying (DPSK) modulation in the presence of phase noise. At the receiver side, non-coherent iterative detection and decoding is assumed. We present a non-binary low-density generator matrix (LDGM) code design which is suitable for both coherent and non-coherent channels. The code construction is strongly related to the one of non-binary irregular repeat-accumulate (IRA) low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes.

This paper investigates the design of non-binary protograph low-density parity-check codes for the Poisson channel with m-ary pulse position modulation. The field order over which the code is constructed is matched to the pulse position modulation order yielding a coded modulation scheme. The optimization of the low-density parity-check code structure is performed via protograph density evolution on a surrogate m-ary erasure channel. The surrogate design is illustrated to be not only accurate, but also robust for a range of practical values of channel background noise and various modulation orders. As a result the proposed codes show excellent performance over the Poisson channel with pulse position modulation outperforming competing schemes. As a side-product of this paper, finite-length benchmarks on the block error probability are provided, together with a union bound to characterize the code performance in the error floor region.

The code design of non-binary low-density paritycheck codes for the erasure channel, under maximum a posteriori decoding, is addressed. In particular, a partially structured ensemble of codes, characterized by a careful control of the amount and of the connectivity of the variable nodes of small degrees, is proposed. The identified ensemble of codes is analyzed in terms of asymptotic thresholds and weight distribution and it is shown that codes from the ensemble provide a remarkable trade-off between waterfall performance, error floor, and decoding complexity. As an example, the performance curve of a short (256,128) code on the memoryless 16-ary erasure channel tightly approaches the Singleton bound at least down to a codeword error rate of 10-9, at low decoding complexity.

A coded modulation scheme for the Poisson channel is investigated. The scheme relies on the serial concatenation of an outer low-density parity-check (LDPC) code over an order-q finite field and q-ary pulse position modulation (PPM). Due to the matching between code and modulation symbols, no iterative message exchange between the decoder and the modulator is required. The PPM capacity limit serves as a reference to evaluate the efficiency of the proposed scheme in the asymptotic setting via density evolution. A simplified form of the Gallager random coding bound (RCB) is also developed and used as a reference for the finite-length performance of the coded modulation scheme. The optimization via density evolution is performed on a surrogate (erasure) channel, yielding excellent iterative decoding thresholds for a wide range of channel parameters. The proposed coded modulation technique performs close to the theoretical bounds not only asymptotically, but also for moderate block lengths. It turns to represent a viable solution for deep-space direct detection optical links, for which the Poisson channel is adopted as a model.

The finite-length design of non-binary low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes for the q-ary erasure channel under maximum a posteriori (MAP) decoding is addressed. A low-complexity MAP decoding algorithm is reviewed for which a code design strategy is proposed. In particular, it is illustrated how a judicious code design permits to find a trade-off between performance in terms of codeword error rate (CER) and decoding complexity. As an example, the performance curve of a short (400, 200) code on the memoryless 4-ary erasure channel tightly approaches the Singleton bound at least down to a CER of 10-8.

Two classes of turbo codes constructed on high-order finite fields are introduced. The codes are derived from a particular protograph sub-ensemble of the (2,3) regular low-density parity-check (LDPC) code ensemble. The first construction results in a parallel concatenation of two non-binary, time-variant accumulators. The second construction consists of the serial concatenation of a non-binary time-variant differentiator with a non-binary time-variant accumulator, and provides a highly structured flexible encoding scheme for (2,4) LDPC codes. A cycle graph representation is also provided. The proposed codes can be decoded efficiently either as LDPC codes (via belief propagation decoding on their bipartite graphs) or as turbo codes (via the forward-backward algorithm applied to the component code trellises) by means of the fast Fourier transform. The proposed codes provide remarkable coding gains (more than 1 dB at a codeword error rate 10-4) over binary LDPC and turbo codes in the moderate-short block length regime.

Low-rate non-binary low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes for coherent and blockwise non-coherent additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channels are developed. The proposed construction is based on the concatenation of non-binary outer LDPC codes with inner binary codes. In case the binary codes are chosen to be Hadamard or Reed-Muller (RM) codes, the complexity of the decoding scheme is considerably reduced. An asymptotic analysis of the concatenation with help of composite capacity considerations anddensity evolution (DE) is provided, from which guidelines on the choice of both inner and outer codes are devised. Finite length designs presented in this work confirm the excellent performance of the proposed codes.

Short non-binary irregular repeat-accumulate (IRA) codes based on well-known Hamiltonian and Hypohamiltonian graphs with large girth are presented. The mapping of the code coordinates on the graph edges is discussed for Hamiltonian graphs, and two encoding methods on Hypohamiltonian graphs are introduced. The performance of the presented codes on order-256 finite fields (F256) is provided for both the additive white Gaussian (AWGN) channel and the binary erasure channel (BEC) under iterative (IT) decoding. For the latter case, the performance under maximum likelihood (ML) decoding is also presented, to illustrate that the proposed codes not only attain performances close to the random coding bound, but also show limited losses when decoded iteratively.

This paper investigates efficient maximum-likelihood (ML) decoding of low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes over erasure channels. A set of algorithms, referred to as pivoting algorithms, is developed. The aim is to limit the average number of pivots (or reference variables) from which all the other erased symbols are recovered iteratively. The suggested algorithms exhibit different trade-offs between complexity of the pivoting phase and average number of pivots. Moreover, a systematic procedure to design LDPC code ensembles for efficient ML decoding is proposed. Numerical results illustrate that the designed LDPC codes achieve a near-optimum performance (very close to the Singleton bound, at least down to a codeword error rate level 10-8) with an affordable decoding complexity. For one of the presented codes and algorithms, a software implementation has been developed which is capable to provide data rates above 1.5 Gbps on a commercial computing platform.

Accurate channel models are of high importance for the design of upcoming mobile satellite systems. Nowadays most of the models for the land mobile satellite channel (LMSC) are based on Markov chains and rely on measurement data, rather than on pure theoretical considerations. A key problem lies in the determination of the model parameters out of the observed data. In this work we face the issue of state identification of the underlying Markov model whose model parameters are a priori unknown. This can be seen as a hiddem Markov model (HMM) problem. For finding the maximum likelihood (ML) estimates of such model parameters the Baum-Welch (BW) algorithm is adapted} to the context of channel modeling. Numerical results on test data sequences reveal the capabilities of the proposed algorithm. Results on real measurement data are finally presented.

This paper investigates non-binary low-density parity-check (LDPC) erasure correcting codes suitable to guarantee reliable transmission in wireless communications systems. In particular, irregular repeat-accumulate (IRA) codes are considered, characterized by linear-time encoding complexity. The performance of non-binary IRA codes is compared with their binary counterparts on the packet erasure channel (PEC), with considerable advantages for the non-binary construction. Particularly, it is illustrated that the performance of short-block-length erasure correcting IRA codes over Galois fields (GFs) of order q >; 2 approaches, under maximum-likelihood (ML) decoding, the performance of ideal maximum distance separable (MDS) codes. This is especially appealing in the context of satellite communications, where efficient codes are required to cope with small link margins.

This paper investigates efficient maximum-likelihood (ML) decoding algorithms for low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes over erasure channels. In particular, enhancements to a previously proposed structured Gaussian elimination approach are presented. The improvements are achieved by developing a set of algorithms, here referred to as pivoting algorithms, aiming to limit the average number of reference variables (or pivots) from which the erased symbols can be recovered. Four pivoting algorithms are compared, which exhibit different trade-offs between the complexity of the pivoting phase and the average number of pivots. Numerical results on the performance of LDPC codes under ML erasure decoding complete the analysis, confirming that a near-optimum performance can be obtained with an affordable decoding complexity, up to very high data rates. For example, for one of the presented algorithms, a software implementation has been developed, which is capable to provide data rates above 1.5 Gbps on a commercial computing platform.

The design of moderate-length erasure correcting low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes over correlated erasure channels is considered. Although the asymptotic LDPC code design remains the same as for a memoryless erasure channel, robustness to the channel correlation shall be guaranteed for the finite length LDPC code. This further requirement is of great importance in several wireless communication scenarios where packet erasure correcting codes represent a simple countermeasure for correlated fade events (e.g., in mobile wireless broadcasting services) and where the channel coherence time is often comparable with the code length. In this paper, the maximum tolerable erasure burst length (MTBL) is adopted as a simple metric for measuring the code robustness to the channel correlation. Correspondingly, a further step in the code construction is suggested, consisting of improving the LDPC code MTBL. Numerical results conducted over a Gilbert erasure channel, under both iterative and maximum likelihood decoding, highlight both the importance of the MTBL improvement in the finite-length code construction and the possibility to tightly approach the performance of maximum distance separable codes.

In this paper, we study the provision of broadband interactive services to passengers of Korean high-speed train in the ISM 2.4 GHz band. We address in particular the design of tunnel gap-fillers (GFs) able to provide bi-directional connectivity to train-based terminals. The work has been developed in the broader context of interactive services provision for high-speed trains through satellite networks. First, a channel model for the in-tunnel propagation is derived. Taking into account the results of the propagation analysis, a comparison between commercial technologies (belonging to both the IEEE and the DVB standard families) is provided, showing the possible strengths and weaknesses of the proposed solutions with respect to architectural and performance point of views.

The railroad satellite channel is characterized by frequent signal outages due to tunnels, bridges and electrical trellises. While for medium/long tunnels the main option to offer reliable and uninterrupted connectivity deals with the adoption of gap-filling techniques, signal outages due to small bridges/tunnels or electrical trellises can be faced with ad-hoc recovery techniques. In this paper, we face the problem from a link layer perspective, showing how a proper design of an erasure correcting code operating at link layer represents a valuable countermeasure against short outage events. The performance evaluation is developed in comparison with a more traditional technique based on physical layer coding in combination with a long channel interleaver. Advantages of the link layer coding scheme will be shown.