Low power low-density parity-checking (ldpc) codes decoder design using dynamic voltage and frequency scaling

Abstract

This thesis presents a low-power LDPC decoder design based on speculative scheduling of energy necessary to decode dynamically varying data frame in both block-fading channels and general AWGN channels. A model of a memory-efficient low-power high-throughput multi-rate array LDPC decoder as well as its FPGA implementa- tion results is first presented. Then, I propose a decoding scheme that provides the feature of constant-time decoding and thus facilitates real-time applications where guaranteed data rate is required. It pre-analyzes each received data frame to estimate the maximum number of necessary iterations for frame convergence. The results are then used to dynamically adjust decoder frequency and switch between multiple-voltage levels; thereby energy use is minimized. This is in contrast to the conventional fixed-iteration decoding schemes that operate at a fixed voltage level regardless of the quality of data received. Analysis shows that the proposed decoding scheme is widely applicable for both two-phase message-passing (TPMP) decoding algorithm and turbo decoding message passing (TDMP) decoding algorithm in block fading channels, and it is independent of the specific LDPC decoder architecture. A decoder architecture utilizing our recently published multi-rate decoding architecture for general AWGN channels is also presented. The result of this thesis is a decoder design scheme that provides a judicious trade-off between power consumption and coding gain.