A Novel Design of Spatially Coupled LDPC Codes for Sliding Window Decoding

We introduce a novel design of spatially coupled low density parity check codes in order to reduce the effects of error propagation in low-latency sliding window decoding for large frame lengths or streaming applications. Specifically, we employ reduced-degree check nodes spaced throughout the coupling chain, which have the effect of allowing the decoder to recover from error bursts. A simplified analysis of the block error rate (BLER) of the proposed codes is presented that allows us to predict the effect of different placements of reduced-degree checks in the coupling chain. Simulation results supporting the beneficial effect of the new code design on the overall BLER performance are included.