Error-Correction Capability of Column-Weight-Three LDPC Codes

In this paper, the error-correction capability of column-weight-three low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes when decoded using the Gallager A algorithm is investigated. It is proved that a necessary condition for a code to correct all error patterns with up to k ges 5 errors is to avoid cycles of length up to 2k in its Tanner graph. As a consequence of this result, it is shown that given any alpha > 0, exist N such that forall n > N, no code in the ensemble of column-weight-three codes can correct all alphan or fewer errors. The results are extended to the bit flipping algorithms.