Laterally connected spatially coupled code chains for transmission over unstable parallel channels

We propose a new coding scheme for parallel binary erasure channels that may have time-varying characteristics. The proposed scheme consists of several spatially coupled codes, each assigned to a different channel, that are sparsely coupled between each other. This sparse coupling, denoted lateral connectivity helps the decoding waves of the different sub-codes to propagate, even if the associated channel undergoes a burst error event. The new ensemble is analyzed using density evolution and it is shown that it outperforms parallel, independent spatially coupled codes.