Union Bound Analysis and Code Design for Multilevel Flash Memory Channels

Multilevel flash memories enable multiple bits to be stored in a single memory cell and hence a significant increase of the storage capacity. The multiple bits that are used for labeling the threshold voltage level of a memory cell belong to different pages. A multilevel flash memory channel resembles a multi-user channel with asymmetric noise, while the data of different pages, which are encoded independently, resembles data of multiple users. In this paper, performance analyses are proposed for this channel by using the union bound technique. In particular, we investigated two different binary labeling schemes of a cell level, the Gray labeling and non-Gray labeling with three maximum-likelihood (ML)-based decoding schemes, which are the joint multi-page ML decoding, page-separate ML decoding, and default setting ML decoding. Our analysis reveals an asymptotic diminishing rate of decoding errors as the channel noise approaches zero, based on which the code design criteria are proposed. It is shown theoretically that the Gray mapping has no joint (i.e., multi-page) decoding gain. The corresponding diminishing decoding error rate is dominated by the weakest code in each page and hence a separate decoding scheme is adequate. On the other hand, the non-Gray mapping has a joint decoding gain which means the weak code can exploit the decoding of the strong code and the diminishing rate of its decoding errors is not subject to the cask effect. Therefore, for Gray mapping, a symmetric coding scheme using equal-strength code for each page achieves better error performance, while for non-Gray mapping with joint decoding, the symmetric coding is not necessary. Moreover, by using the asymmetric coding scheme through assigning different code rates to different pages, the non-Gray mapping can achieve higher overall sum rate than Gray mapping with a similar decoding error rate performance.