Design and analysis of E2RC codes

We consider the design and analysis of the efficiently-encodable rate-compatible (E²RC) irregular LDPC codes proposed in previous work. In this work we introduce semi-structured E²RC-like codes and protograph E²RC codes. EXIT chart based methods are developed for the design of semi-structured E²RC-like codes that allow us to determine near-optimal degree distributions for the systematic part of the code while taking into account the structure of the deterministic parity part, thus resolving one of the open issues in the original construction. We develop a fast EXIT function computation method that does not rely on Monte-Carlo simulations and can be used in other scenarios as well. Our approach allows us to jointly optimize code performance across the range of rates under puncturing. We then consider protograph E²RC codes (that have a protograph representation) and propose rules for designing a family of rate-compatible punctured protographs with low thresholds. For both the semi-structured and protograph E²RC families we obtain codes whose gap to capacity is at most 0.3 dB across the range of rates when the maximum variable node degree is twenty.