Design of small rate, close to ideal, GLDPC-staircase AL-FEC codes for the erasure channel

This work introduces the Generalized Low Density Parity Check (GLDPC)-Staircase codes for the erasure channel, that are constructed by extending LDPC-Staircase codes through Reed Solomon (RS) codes based on “quasi” Hankel matrices. This construction has several key benefits: in addition to the LDPC-Staircase repair symbols, it adds extra-repair symbols that can be produced on demand and in large quantities, which provides small rate capabilities. Additionally, with selecting the best internal parameters of GLDPC graph and under hybrid Iterative/Reed-Solomon/Maximum Likelihood decoding, the GLDPC-Staircase codes feature a very small decoding overhead and a low error floor. These excellent erasure capabilities, close to that of ideal, MDS codes, are obtained both with large and very small objects, whereas, as a matter of comparison, LDPC codes are known to be asymptotically good. Therefore, these properties make GLDPC-Staircase codes an excellent AL-FEC solution for many situations that require erasure protection such as media streaming.