Low-Complexity Dynamic Single-Minimum Min-Sum Algorithm and Hardware Implementation for LDPC Codes

As a type of low-complexity decoding algorithm for low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes, the single-minimum min-sum (smMS) algorithm avoids finding the second minimum, while estimates it by adding a fixed value to the minimum instead. However, the inaccurate estimation of the sub-minimum results in obvious performance degradation. In this work, we propose an improved smMS algorithm, which adds a dynamic value to the minimum based on a special variable that can be easily computed and largely represents the convergence degree of iterative decoding. This new algorithm is thus called dynamic smMS (dsmMS) algorithm. In comparison to the standard normalized min-sum (NMS) algorithm, the performance gap for LDPC code (672,588) is narrowed from 0.55 dB of the smMS to 0.12 dB of the dsmMS. We also present a partially parallel decoding architecture for the dsmMS algorithm, and implement it under 55nm CMOS technology with an area of 0.21 mm
²
, Furthermore, compared with the traditional NMS decoder, the proposed design can reduce the area of the total decoder by 22%.