An Introduction to LDPC Codes
Bane Vasic, Erozan M. Kurtas · 2004
Low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes are a class of linear block codes which provide near-capacity performance on a large collection of data transmission and storage channels while simultaneously admitting implementable decoders. LDPC codes were first proposed by Gallager in his 1960 doctoral dissertation [1] and were scarcely considered in the 35 years that followed. One notable exception is the important work of Tanner in 1981 [2] in which Tanner generalized LDPC codes and introduced a graphical representation of LDPC codes, now called Tanner graphs. The study of LDPC codes was resurrected in the mid1990s with the work of MacKay, Luby, and others [3-5] who noticed, apparently independently of the work of Gallager, the advantages of linear block codes which possess sparse (low-density) parity-check matrices.