A probabilistic computation method for the weight distribution of low-density parity-check codes

Low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes achieve outstanding performance by the sum-product decoder. Its performance approaches the maximum-likelihood (ML) decoding performance at high SNR region. Upper bounds on the error probability of the ML decoded LDPC codes can be computed using the weight distribution. Recently, X.-Y. Hu et al. presented an approximate algorithm for estimating the weight distribution of LDPC codes. However, the weight distribution computed by their method depends on the iterative decoding algorithm, and is not always estimated exactly. In this paper, we propose a probabilistic method for computing the low-part weight distribution of LDPC codes. Using our method, the approximate weight distribution of LDPC codes can be computed with high accuracy