On the Minimum/Stopping Distance of Array Low-Density Parity-Check Codes

In this paper, we study the minimum/stopping distance of array low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes. An array LDPC code is a quasi-cyclic LDPC code specified by two integers q and m, where q is an odd prime and m q. In the literature, the minimum/stopping distance of these codes (denoted by d(q, m) and h(q, m), respectively) has been thoroughly studied for m 5. Both exact results, for small values of q and m, and general (i.e., independent of q) bounds have been established. For m = 6, the best known minimum distance upper bound, derived by Mittelholzer, is d(q, 6) 32. In this paper, we derive an improved upper bound of d(q, 6) 20 and a new upper bound d(q, 7) 24 by using the concept of a template support matrix of a codeword/stopping set. The bounds are tight with high probability in the sense that we have not been able to find codewords of strictly lower weight for several values of q using a minimum distance probabilistic algorithm. Finally, we provide new specific minimum/stopping distance results for m 7 and low-to-moderate values of q ≤79.