A high-throughput LDPC decoder architecture for high-rate WPAN systems

This paper presents a high-throughput memory-efficient decoder architecture for Quasi-Cyclic Low-Density Parity-Check (QC-LDPC) codes in the high-rate wireless personal area network applications. Two novel techniques which can apply to our selected QC-LDPC codes are proposed, including four-parallel block layered decoding architecture and simplification of the switch networks. The proposed architecture based on a block parallel decoding scheme replaces a crossbar-based interconnect network with a fixed wire network for a switch network. In addition, two-stage pipelining is used to improve the clock speed. A 672-bit, rate-1/2 LDPC decoder is implemented using 90 nm CMOS technology. The design achieves an information throughput of 1.45 Gbps at a clock speed of 285 MHz with a maximum of 16 iterations.