Design of masking matrix for QC-LDPC codes

The masking matrix plays an important role in constructing new classes of regular and irregular quasi-cyclic low density parity check (QC-LDPC) codes. By coupling two identical graphs in a special way, we present a new structure of the masking matrix, whose Tanner graph can be seen as a protograph. From this perspective, we propose a Gaussian Approximation algorithm for protograph-based LDPC codes to analyze the asymptotic performance of this class of codes. It is shown that, although the proposed structure of the masking matrix has almost the same convergence threshold as the conventional one produced randomly by progressive edge growth (PEG) algorithm, the former converges faster than the latter. Simulation results illustrate that the QC-LDPC code constructed by the proposed structure of the masking matrix has about 0.2dB coding gains compared with the conventional one.