Unequal Error Protection QC-LDPC Codes via Masking

Abstract

In this paper, a generalized construction of quasi-cyclic low-density parity-check (QC-LDPC) codes for unequal error protection (UEP) is proposed based on the masking technique. We can obtain UEP QC-LDPC codes as long as the Tanner graph of the masking matrix satisfies a general condition which can include our previous UEP construction as a special case. A sufficient condition to have flexible choice of protection levels is then presented. Simulation results show that the constructed codes can indeed provide codeword bits with different bit-error-rate performance.