Multi-edge type unequal error protecting low-density parity-check codes

Irregular low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes are particularly well-suited for transmission schemes that require unequal error protection (UEP) of the transmitted data due to the different connection degrees of its variable nodes. However, this UEP capability is strongly dependent on the connection profile among the protection classes. This paper applies a multi-edge type analysis of LDPC codes for optimizing such a connection profile according to the performance requirements of each protection class. This allows the construction of UEP-LDPC codes where the difference between the performance of the protection classes can be adjusted and with an UEP capability that does not vanish as the number of decoding iterations grows.