Puncturing for finite length low-density parity-check codes

In this paper we study and propose an algorithm to puncture finite length low density parity check (LDPC) codes (Ha, J, et al., 2002). The introduced puncturing criterion results in good performance (for 1024 and 4096 bits) when compared with both random puncturing and dedicated LDPC codes, i.e. unpunctured codes designed for a given rate. The comparison also shows that the proposed punctured LDPC codes have better block-error rates than the dedicated codes because of longer effective block lengths of the high-rate puncturing. Although we apply the idea for regular LDPC codes, we can easily modify the idea for irregular LDPC codes.