Randomly punctured spatially coupled LDPC codes

In this paper, we study random puncturing of protograph-based spatially coupled low-density parity-check (SC-LDPC) code ensembles. We show that, with respect to iterative decoding threshold, the strength and suitability of an LDPC code ensemble for random puncturing over the binary erasure channel (BEC) is completely determined by a single constant θ ≥ 1 that depends only on the rate and iterative decoding threshold of the mother code ensemble. We then use this analysis to show that randomly punctured SC-LDPC code ensembles display near capacity thresholds for a wide range of rates. We also perform an asymptotic minimum distance analysis and show that, like the SC-LDPC mother code ensemble, the punctured SC-LDPC code ensembles are also asymptotically good. Finally, we present some simulation results that confirm the excellent decoding performance promised by the asymptotic results.