Spatially-coupled communication system for the correlated erasure channel

Low implementation complexity, low delay and close-to-optimal performance over a wide variety of channels are some of the advantages of spatially-coupled low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes. However, the error performance of the sliding window decoding scheme that is used to decode these codes is considerably degraded over channels with memory, such as the correlated erasure channel. Employing a block interleaver to encounter this situation is not always a viable option, since it introduces a large amount of delay and cancels out the low-delay property of the sliding window decoder. Another way to reduce the effects of erasure bursts is to construct a more robust code ensemble by presenting additional code design rules. However, this approach results in additional constraints on the already complicated code construction process. The authors propose a novel communication system that combats the effects of the erasure bursts through the use of a convolutional interleaver. The proposed system combines the inherent convolutional nature of the spatially-coupled LDPC codes with that of a convolutional interleaver to achieve very low overall delay. The performance of the proposed approach is analysed using the density evolution technique and the performance improvement is demonstrated as a function of the interleaving delay via computer simulations.