Design of low-density parity-check Codes for multiple-input multiple-output wireless systems

Mobile telephony, wireless networks and wireless telemetry systems have gone from simple single-input single-output wireless architectures with low data transmission rates to complex systems employing multiple antennas and forward error correction algorithms capable of high data transmission rates over wireless channels. Claude Shannon provided the fundamental capacity limits for a communications system and it can be shown that the capacity for a single-input single-output systems is limited in it’s capability to provide for modern wireless applications. The introduction of multiple-input multiple-output systems employing multiple antenna elements and orthogonal coding structures proved beneficial and could provide the capacities required for modern wireless applications. This thesis begins with an introduction and overview of space-time coding and the codes of Tarokh, Jafarkhani and Alamouti. Further, this thesis provides an introduction and overview to the family of forward error correction codes known as low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes. LDPC codes, when employed over Gaussian channels, provide near-Shannon limit performance and the question is posed as to their suitability for a wireless multiple-input multiple-output system employing multiple antennas and space-time coding. This question is answered by the use and demonstration of LDPC codes as outer codes to a MIMO system employing space-time block codes and a modified maximum-likelihood decoder. By modifying the space-time block-code decoder to provide a soft-information output, iterative decoders such as the sum-product algorithm can be employed to provide significant performance gains over a Rayleigh flat-fading channel. Further the use of design tools such as EXIT charts can then be used to design codes. The key to allowing the use of EXIT charts is the observation that a MIMO system employing orthogonal transmissions in a Rayleigh flat-fading channel is the equivalent to a SISO channel employing Nakagami-m fading coefficients. The seemingly complex MIMO system can now be analyzed in the form of a simpler SISO equivalent allowing the use of techniques such as EXIT charts to be employed in order to design codes with known and predictable performance haracteristics. This thesis demonstrates this technique and shows by example the performance gains that can be achieved for MIMO systems and opens some further questions for future research.