Finite alphabet iterative decoding of LDPC codes with coarsely quantized neural networks

X Xiao, B Vasic, R Tandon, S Lin - 2019 IEEE Global …, 2019 - ieeexplore.ieee.org
X Xiao, B Vasic, R Tandon, S Lin
2019 IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM), 2019ieeexplore.ieee.org
In this paper, we introduce a method of using quantized neural networks (QNN) to design
finite alphabet message passing decoders (FAID) for Low-Density Parity Check (LDPC)
codes. Specifically, we construct a neural network with low precision activations to optimize
a FAID over Additive White Gaussian Noise Channel (AWGNC). The low precision
activations cause a critical issue that their gradients vanish almost everywhere, making it
difficult to use classical backward propagation. We introduce straight-through estimators …
In this paper, we introduce a method of using quantized neural networks (QNN) to design finite alphabet message passing decoders (FAID) for Low-Density Parity Check (LDPC) codes. Specifically, we construct a neural network with low precision activations to optimize a FAID over Additive White Gaussian Noise Channel (AWGNC). The low precision activations cause a critical issue that their gradients vanish almost everywhere, making it difficult to use classical backward propagation. We introduce straight-through estimators (STE) to avoid this problem, by replacing zero derivatives of quantized activations with surrogate gradients in the chain rules. We present a systematic approach to train such networks while minimizing the bit error rate, which is a widely used and accurate metric to measure the performance of iterative decoders. Examples and simulations show that by training a QNN, a FAID with 3-bit of message and 4-bit of channel output can be obtained, which performs better than the more complex floating-point minsum decoding algorithm. This methodology is promising in the sense that it facilitates designing low-precision FAID for LDPC codes while maintaining good error performance in a flexible and efficient manner.
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