Performance Bounds For Quantized Spatially Coupled Ldpc Decoders Based On Absorbing Sets

Absorbing sets are known to be the primary factor in the error-floor performance of low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes with message passing decoders over the additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel. Besides showing excellent waterfall performance, spatially coupled LDPC (SC-LDPC) codes that are constructed by an edge spreading technique are known to have fewer cycles and absorbing sets than their block code counterparts, and therefore to exhibit better error-floor performance. Based on our previously obtained results for quantized LDPC block decoders, we derive lower bounds on the performance of quantized SC-LDPC decoders, including both a flooding schedule decoder and a sliding window decoder. Numerical simulation results confirm the accuracy of the obtained bounds and show that, for quantized decoders, properly designed SC-LDPC codes have better error-floor performance than their underlying LDPC block codes.