Doubly-Recursive Block Markov Superposition Transmission: A Low-Complexity and Flexible Coding Scheme

In this paper, we introduce a novel method, called doubly-recursive block Markov superposition transmission (DrBMST), to construct high-performance spatially coupled codes. An important characteristic of DrBMST codes is that the degrees of the constraint nodes in their normal graphs are at most three. As a result, DrBMST codes can be decoded with low complexity. We first prove that the error probability of an enlarged DrBMST code ensemble can be made arbitrarily small under windowed maximum-likelihood decoding (MLD) by increasing the decoding window size. This result partially explains the superior performances of DrBMST codes. Then we propose to use the extrinsic information transfer (EXIT) chart analysis to estimate the iterative windowed decoding thresholds of DrBMST codes. The EXIT chart analyses show that, with such a simple structure, DrBMST codes are comparable to BMST codes with large encoding memories in terms of decoding thresholds. Finally, we carry out comparisons to validate the advantages of DrBMST codes in terms of error performances and decoding complexities. In particular, for a decoding latency of 20,000 bits, the DrBMST code performs better than the (4, 8)-regular spatially coupled low-density parity-check (SC-LDPC) code, but with lower computational complexity. Hence, DrBMST codes can be used in communication systems with limited computational resources. In addition, we show that DrBMST can be used to construct multiple-rate codes.