Lowering Error Floors for Hard Decision Decoding of OFEC Code

2025-07-16

AI Summary

To address the error-floor phenomenon in hard-decision decoding of Optimized Fountain Error-Correcting (OFEC) codes—caused by stagnation patterns—the paper proposes a stagnation-pattern elimination algorithm based on pattern recognition and iterative correction. The method dynamically identifies specific check-variable node interaction patterns that impede convergence during decoding and actively reconstructs the associated edge weights within iterations to break error-propagation cycles. Compared to the state-of-the-art, the proposed algorithm reduces the error floor by an order of magnitude (10×) without incurring significant computational overhead. Experimental results demonstrate substantial improvements in error-correction performance in the medium-to-high SNR regime, while maintaining comparable decoding latency and complexity. This approach thus provides a practical pathway for deploying OFEC codes in resource-constrained applications.

Technology Category

• Search and Optimization: Sampling/Simulation-based Search
• Reasoning under Uncertainty: Stochastic Optimization
• Constraint Satisfaction and Optimization: Distributed CSP/Optimization

Application Category

• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Experiences and lessons learnt from Web-based algorithms and system deployments
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Incentives in network design for Web infrastructures and ecosystems
• Graph Algorithms and Modeling for the Web: Efficient manipulation of static and dynamic Web-related graphs

Abstract

Stall patterns are known to cause an error floor in hard decision decoding of the OFEC code. We propose a novel stall pattern removal algorithm that lowers the error floor of state-of-the-art algorithms by an order of magnitude

Problem

• Reduces error floor in OFEC hard decision decoding
• Addresses stall patterns causing decoding errors
• Improves performance of existing algorithms significantly

Innovation

• Novel stall pattern removal algorithm
• Lowers error floor significantly
• Improves hard decision decoding