Design of Rate Compatible Spatially Coupled LDPC Codes

This paper presents one method of designing rate-compatible spatially coupled low-density parity-check (SCLDPC) codes. Rate compatibility is realized by partial repetition extending technique. Specially, given a high-rate SCLDPC mother code, the rate-compatible codes can be obtained by first selecting a certain fraction of variable nodes at each position and then repeating them certain times. By adjusting the selection fractions and repetition times, rate-compatibility can be achieved. Density evolution analysis shows that the proposed rate-compatible SCLDPC code ensembles display capacity approaching thresholds over the binary erasure channel.