Rank Analysis of Parity-Check Matrices for Quasi-Cyclic LDPC Codes

Quasi-cyclic low-density parity-check (QC-LDPC) codes are an important class of LDPC codes which can be encoded and decoded with low complexity and suitable for many applications. As the code dimension, which describes the number of protected information bits, is equal to the code length minus the rank of the parity-check matrix and the parity-check matrix for QC-LDPC codes is usually not full-rank, determining the rank of the parity-check matrix is of essential importance. In this paper, we study the rank of the parity-check matrix for QC-LDPC codes based on the associated polynomials for circulant matrices. A formula for the rank of the parity-check matrix with only one row-block is first derived. We then extend the result to matrices with two, three, or more row-blocks. Some bounds are also presented for matrices with arbitrary numbers of row-blocks. Furthermore, the exact rank is determined for a class of algebraically constructed parity-check matrices.