English

Bethe Free Energy Approach to LDPC Decoding on Memory Channels

Information Theory 2009-04-07 v1 math.IT

Abstract

We address the problem of the joint sequence detection in partial-response (PR) channels and decoding of low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes. We model the PR channel and the LDPC code as a combined inference problem. We present for the first time the derivation of the belief propagation (BP) equations that allow the simultaneous detection and decoding of a LDPC codeword in a PR channel. To accomplish this we follow an approach from statistical mechanics, in which the Bethe free energy is minimized with respect to the beliefs on the nodes of the PR-LDPC graph. The equations obtained are explicit and are optimal for decoding LDPC codes on PR channels with polynomial h(D)=1aDnh(D) = 1 - a D^n (a real, n positive integer) in the sense that they provide the exact inference of the marginal probabilities on the nodes in a graph free of loops. A simple algorithmic solution to the set of BP equations is proposed and evaluated using numerical simulations, yielding bit-error rate performances that surpass those of turbo equalization.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0904.0747,
  title  = {Bethe Free Energy Approach to LDPC Decoding on Memory Channels},
  author = {Jaime A. Anguita and Michael Chertkov and Mark A. Neifeld and Bane Vasic},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0904.0747},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

9 pages, 8 figures, submitted to Transactions on Communications

R2 v1 2026-06-21T12:48:15.018Z