Non-binary LDPC code with multiple memory reads for multi-level-cell (MLC) flash

NAND flash memory has been dominantly used in consumer electronic products ranging from hand-held phones to personal computers. However, the stored data in NAND flash memory is subject to several impairments such as Random Telegraph Noise (RTN), Cell-to-Cell Interference (CCI) and Data Retention Effect over time. In this paper, we focus on the RTN effect over flash memory cells which becomes even more serious as the memory approaches its lifetime. When the flash cells withstand increasingly large number of Program/Erase (P/E) operation, multiple interface traps are generated at tunnel oxide layer which results into large fluctuations in cell threshold voltage. These voltage fluctuations, in turn, degrade the system error performance. To tackle with this problem, we propose a simple yet effective system-level decoding scheme in which the memory cells are read multiple times to obtain threshold voltage fluctuations caused by RTN. Since each memory read operation produces a new realization of threshold voltage, we combine the read signal with LDPC extrinsic information. The performance improvements of our scheme are validated by computer simulation which shows that the lifetime of flash memory can be extended by more than 10K P/E cycles while maintaining bit-error-rate at 10^-6 using NB-LDPC code over GF (4) with frame size N = 2272. This paper also presents the trade-off between performance improvement and extra memory sensing latency.