Design and Analysis of Non-Binary LDPC Codes for Bandwidth-Efficient Communications

SPEAKER: Dr. Amir Bennatan, Post-doctoral Researcher, Program for Applied and Computation Mathematics, Princeton UniversityABSTRACT: The revolutionary performance of classic binary LDPC codes is well known to be restricted to channels that are binary-input and symmetric-output, ruling-out bandwidth-efficient (high SNR) channels. Traditionally, this problem was solved by using binary codes as components of a multilevel or BICM scheme. An interesting alternative, however, starts off with non-binary LDPC codes.Non-binary LDPC codes have long been known to the engineering community, but unlike their binary counterparts, they were generally neglected, perhaps because the theory involving them was not as mature. Our analysis has produced simple expressions that can be used to design the parameters that govern these codes. It includes generalizations of concepts like symmetry, stability, Gaussian approximation (using a single scalar parameter) and EXIT charts. We also provide an analysis of the codes under maximum-likelihood decoding, proving that they are able to achieve the capacity of any discrete-memoryless channel.Using this analysis, we designed non-binary LDPC codes that outperform multilevel codes at short block lengths. We also designed codes at a spectral efficiency of 6 bits/s/Hz that are capable of transmission within 0.56 dB of the Shannon limit (well within the shaping gap).Joint work with David Burshtein (Tel Aviv University)Bio: Amir Bennatan received the B.Sc. degree (summa cum laude) in mathematics and computer science, from Tel Aviv University in 1994. He received the M.Sc. degree (magna cum laude) and the Ph.D. degree, both in electrical engineering, from Tel Aviv University, in 2002 and 2006 respectively. During 1995-2000 he worked at the Israel Air Force Information Systems unit, including three years as a software team leader and systems analyst. He is currently a post-doctoral researcher at the Program for Applied and Computation Mathematics (PACM) at Princeton University. Dr. Bennatan was a recipient of a scholarship from the Wolf Foundation in 2002, of the Weinstein award in 2002, 2003 and 2004 and of an Intel study award in 2004. His fields of interest include wireless communications, coding theory, and software engineering methodologies.Host: Prof. Giuseppe Caire, caire@usc.edu

Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Mayumi Thrasher