Conditional entropy of non-binary LDPC codes over the BEC

We consider transmission over the binary erasure channel (BEC) using non-binary LDPC codes. We generalize the concept of stopping sets to non-binary LDPC codes. We give a combinatorial characterization of decoding failures for non-binary LDPC codes decoded via Belief Propagation (BP). Using the density evolution analysis, we compute the asymptotic residual degree distribution for non-binary LDPC codes. In order to show that asymptotically almost every code in the non-binary LDPC ensemble has a rate equal to the design rate, we generalize the arguments of Measson, Montanari, and Urbanke to the non-binary setting. This generalization enables us to compute the conditional entropy of non-binary LDPC codes. We observe that the Maxwell construction of Measson, Montanari, and Urbanke relating the performance of MAP and BP decoding, holds in the setting of non-binary LDPC codes.