Rate-compatible spatially coupled repeat-accumulate codes via successive extension

摘要

A rate-compatible spatially coupled repeat-accumulate (RC-SC-RA) code is proposed. Its protograph is obtained by extending a given (J, K, L) SC-RA coupled chain (denoted as the mother chain) with extra check nodes and parity bit nodes T times. At each time, the extension is realized via coupling the message bits in the same way as that in the mother chain. Rate-compatibility is achieved by adjusting the extension parameters and applying random puncturing technique. Density evolution analysis shows that the iterative decoding thresholds of all the member codes in the proposed RC-SC-RA code family are very close to Shannon limits over the binary erasure channel. Finite length simulation results are consistent with the thresholds well. Moreover, the proposed RC-SC-RA codes perform better than spatially coupled low density parity check (SC-LDPC) codes in decoding performance especially in lower-rate region.