In contemporary digital communications design, two major challenges should be addressed: adaptability and flexibility. The system should be capable of flexible and efficient use of all available spectrums and should be adaptable to provide efficient support for the diverse set of service characteristics. These needs imply the necessity of limit-achieving and flexible channel coding techniques, to improve system reliability. Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) codes fit such requirements well, since they are capacity-achieving. Moreover, through puncturing, allowing the adaption of the coding rate to different channel conditions with a single encoder/decoder pair, adaptability and flexibility can be obtained at a low computational cost. In this paper, the design of rate-compatible puncturing patterns for LDPCs is addressed. We use a previously defined formal analysis of a class of punctured LDPC codes through their equivalent parity check matrices. We address a new design criterion for the puncturing patterns using a simplified analysis of the decoding belief propagation algorithm, i.e., considering a Gaussian approximation for message densities under density evolution, and a simple algorithmic method, recently defined by the Authors, to estimate the threshold for regular and irregular LDPC codes on memoryless binaryinput continuous-output Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) channels.

The main concern in nowadays digital communications standards, such as IEEE802.11n, 802.16e (Wi-MAX), 100BaseT Ethernet, and Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB), is the need of adaptive and flexible communication techniques. The request for higher efficiency, both in bandwidth use and power consumption, increases the need for limit-achieving, flexible techniques of channel coding. Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) Codes are very interesting because of their high performances and potential flexibility introduced by puncturing. In this paper, the design of rate-compatible LDPC is addressed. A class of punctured LDPC codes is defined through their equivalent parity check matrices. A formal analysis is provided, based on a simplified approach on the decoding belief propagation algorithm, i.e., considering a Gaussian approximation for message densities under density evolution. A suitable design criterion for the puncturing patterns is then addressed

In contemporary digital communications design, two major challenges should be addressed: adaptability and flexibility. The system should be capable of flexible and efficient use of all available spectrums and should be adaptable to provide efficient support for the diverse set of service characteristics. These needs imply the necessity of limit-achieving and flexible channel coding techniques, to improve system reliability. Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) codes fit such requirements well, since they are capacity-achieving. Moreover, through puncturing, allowing the adaption of the coding rate to different channel conditions with a single encoder/decoder pair, adaptability and flexibility can be obtained at a low computational cost. In this paper, the design of rate-compatible puncturing patterns for LDPCs is addressed. We use a previously defined formal analysis of a class of punctured LDPC codes through their equivalent parity check matrices. We address a new design criterion for the puncturing patterns using a simplified analysis of the decoding belief propagation algorithm, i.e., considering a Gaussian approximation for message densities under density evolution, and a simple algorithmic method, recently defined by the Authors, to estimate the threshold for regular and irregular LDPC codes on memoryless binaryinput continuous-output Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) channels.

In this paper a simple algorithm for the estimation of the Direct Path (DP) Time of Arrival (TOA) in an OFDM-based telecommunications system is proposed. It is shown that, under certain conditions, it is possible to infer the TOA of the direct path by estimating the phase slope across the subcarriers. The proposed algorithm exploits the intrinsic properties of a multi-carrier OFDM system to perform the estimation, and it can be employed in a fully opportunistic way if known reference signals (intended for purposes other than TOA estimation) are available. The obtained TOA estimations can be used to calculate the pseudo-ranges that can be employed for trilateration-based positioning. The performance of the proposed algorithm and its variants are assessed with simulations

This paper investigates the performance of irregular low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes on memoryless BI-AWGN (Binary Input-Additive White Gaussian Noise) channels, with sum-product decoding. Objective of this work is to study the relationship between an LDPC code performance and some parameters specifying the code itself, such as the coefficients of its degree distributions. In fact, these coefficients where shown in Di et al.'s 2006 paper to determine the growth rate of the minimum distance of an LDPC code, which can be only sublinear in the block length in some well defined conditions of the degree distribution pair.