Rate-compatible spatially coupled LDPC code ensembles by partial repetition extension

Herein, one partial repetition extension method is proposed to construct the rate-compatible spatially coupled low-density parity-check (RC-SCLDPC) codes. For each position of the base SCLDPC code, a certain proportion of the variable nodes are first selected randomly and then repeated a certain number of times. By adjusting the selection proportions and the repetition times, a family of RC-SCLDPC codes with arbitrary rates from 0 to the rate of the base SCLDPC code can be obtained and the rate-compatibility is realized. Threshold analysis results show that all member codes in the proposed RC-SCLDPC code family display capacity-approaching thresholds over the binary erasure channel and additive white Gaussian noise channel. Finite length simulation results also confirm their excellent thresholds. Moreover, the decoding complexity can be significantly decreased using this partial repetition extension method.