The threshold, or saturation phenomenon of spatially coupled systems is revisited in the light of Lyapunov's theory of dynamical systems. It is shown that an application of Lyapunov's direct method can be used to quantitatively describe the threshold phenomenon, prove convergence, and compute threshold values. This provides a general proof methodology for the various systems recently studied. Examples of spatially coupled systems are given and their thresholds are computed.
Recently, it has been observed that terminated low-density-parity-check (LDPC) convolutional codes (or spatially-coupled codes) appear to approach capacity universally across the class of binary memoryless channels. This is facilitated by the "threshold saturation" effect whereby the belief-propagation (BP) threshold of the spatially-coupled ensemble is boosted to the maximum a-posteriori (MAP) threshold of the underlying constituent ensemble. In this paper, we consider the universality of spatially-coupled codes over intersymbol-interference (ISI) channels under joint iterative decoding. More…
In this paper we prove threshold saturation for spatially coupled turbo codes (SC-TCs) and braided convolutional codes (BCCs) over the binary erasure channel. We introduce a compact graph representation for the ensembles of SC-TC and BCC codes which simplifies their description and the analysis of the message passing decoding. We demonstrate that by few assumptions in the ensembles of these codes, it is possible to rewrite their vector recursions in a form which places these ensembles under the category of scalar admissible systems. This allows us to define potential functions and prove thresh…
We consider spatially coupled code ensembles over a multiple access channel. Convolutional LDPC ensembles are one instance of spatially coupled codes. It was shown recently that, for transmission over the binary erasure channel, this coupling of individual code ensembles has the effect of increasing the belief propagation threshold of the coupled ensembles to the maximum a-posteriori threshold of the underlying ensemble. In this sense, spatially coupled codes were shown to be capacity achieving. It was observed, empirically, that these codes are universal in the sense that they achieve perform…
Spatially-coupled low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes, which were first introduced as LDPC convolutional codes, have been shown to exhibit excellent performance under low-complexity belief-propagation decoding. This phenomenon is now termed threshold saturation via spatial coupling. Spatially-coupled codes have been successfully applied in numerous areas. In particular, it was proven that spatially-coupled regular LDPC codes universally achieve capacity over the class of binary memoryless symmetric (BMS) channels under belief-propagation decoding. Recently, potential functions have been used…
Spatial coupling was proved to improve the belief-propagation (BP) performance up to the maximum-a-posteriori (MAP) performance. This paper addresses an extended class of spatially coupled (SC) systems. A potential function is derived for characterizing a lower bound on the BP performance of the extended SC systems, and shown to be different from the potential for the conventional SC systems. This may imply that the BP performance for the extended SC systems does not coincide with the MAP performance for the corresponding uncoupled system. SC bit-interleaved coded modulation with iterative dec…
We study the performance of binary spatially-coupled low-density parity-check codes (SC-LDPC) when used with bit-interleaved coded-modulation (BICM) schemes. This paper considers the cases when transmission takes place over additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN)channels and Rayleigh fast-fading channels. The technique of upper bounding the maximum-a-posteriori (MAP) decoding performance of LDPC codes using an area theorem is extended for BICM schemes. The upper bound is computed for both the optimal MAP demapper and the suboptimal max-log-MAP (MLM) demapper. It is observed that this bound approa…
Families of generalized spatially-coupled low-density parity-check (GSC-LDPC) code ensembles can be formed by terminating protograph-based generalized LDPC convolutional (GLDPCC) codes. It has previously been shown that ensembles of GSC-LDPC codes constructed from a protograph have better iterative decoding thresholds than their block code counterparts, and that, for large termination lengths, their thresholds coincide with the maximum a-posteriori (MAP) decoding threshold of the underlying generalized LDPC block code ensemble. Here we show that, in addition to their excellent iterative decodi…
We show how the iterative decoding threshold of tailbiting spatially coupled (SC) low-density parity-check (LDPC) code ensembles can be improved over the binary input additive white Gaussian noise channel by allowing the use of different transmission energies for the codeword bits. We refer to the proposed approach as energy shaping. We focus on the special case where the transmission energy of a bit is selected among two values, and where a contiguous portion of the codeword is transmitted with the largest one. Given these constraints, an optimal energy boosting policy is derived by means of …
We analyze the asymptotic performance of nonbinary spatially-coupled low-density parity-check (SC-LDPC) codes built on the general linear group, when the transmission takes place over the binary erasure channel. We propose an efficient method to derive an upper bound to the maximum a posteriori probability (MAP) threshold for nonbinary LDPC codes, and observe that the MAP performance of regular LDPC codes improves with the alphabet size. We then consider nonbinary SC-LDPC codes. We show that the same threshold saturation effect experienced by binary SC-LDPC codes occurs for the nonbinary codes…
In this paper, we investigate the impact of spatial coupling on the thresholds of turbo-like codes. Parallel concatenated and serially concatenated convolutional codes as well as braided convolutional codes (BCCs) are compared by means of an exact density evolution (DE) analysis for the binary erasure channel (BEC). We propose two extensions of the original BCC ensemble to improve its threshold and demonstrate that their BP thresholds approach the maximum-a-posteriori (MAP) threshold of the uncoupled ensemble. A comparison of the different ensembles shows that parallel concatenated ensembles c…
Low-density parity-check (LDPC) convolutional codes have been shown to exhibit excellent performance under low-complexity belief-propagation decoding [1], [2]. This phenomenon is now termed threshold saturation via spatial coupling. The underlying principle behind this appears to be very general and spatially-coupled (SC) codes have been successfully applied in numerous areas. Recently, SC regular LDPC codes have been proven to achieve capacity universally, over the class of binary memoryless symmetric (BMS) channels, under belief-propagation decoding [3], [4]. In [5], [6], potential functions…
We recently proved threshold saturation for spatially coupled sparse superposition codes on the additive white Gaussian noise channel. Here we generalize our analysis to a much broader setting. We show for any memoryless channel that spatial coupling allows generalized approximate message-passing (GAMP) decoding to reach the potential (or Bayes optimal) threshold of the code ensemble. Moreover in the large input alphabet size limit: i) the GAMP algorithmic threshold of the underlying (or uncoupled) code ensemble is simply expressed as a Fisher information; ii) the potential threshold tends to …
Spatially-coupled low-density lattice codes (LDLC) are constructed using protographs. Using Monte Carlo density evolution using single-Gaussian messages, we observe that the threshold of the spatially-coupled LDLC is within 0.22 dB of capacity of the unconstrained power channel. This is in contrast with a 0.5 dB noise threshold for the conventional LDLC lattice construction.
We study spatially coupled LDPC codes that allow access to sub-blocks much smaller than the full code block. Sub-block access is realized by a semi-global decoder that decodes a chosen target sub-block by only accessing the target, plus a prescribed number of helper sub-blocks adjacent in the code chain. This paper develops a theoretical methodology for analyzing the semi-global decoding performance of spatially coupled LDPC codes constructed from protographs. The main result shows that semi-global decoding thresholds can be derived from certain thresholds we define for the single-sub-block gr…
A counter braid (CB) is a novel counter architecture introduced by Lu et al. in 2007 for per-flow measurements on high-speed links. CBs achieve an asymptotic compression rate (under optimal decoding) that matches the entropy lower bound of the flow size distribution. Spatially-coupled CBs (SC-CBs) have recently been proposed. In this work, we further analyze single-layer CBs and SC-CBs using an equivalent bipartite graph representation of CBs. On this equivalent representation, we show that the potential and area thresholds are equal. We also show that the area under the extended belief propag…
In this paper, we introduce the concept of spatially coupled turbo-like codes (SC-TCs) as the spatial coupling of a number of turbo-like code ensembles. In particular, we consider the spatial coupling of Berrou et al. parallel concatenated codes (PCCs) and Benedetto et al. serially concatenated codes (SCCs). Furthermore, we propose two extensions of braided convolutional codes (BCCs), a class of turbo-like codes which have an inherent spatially coupled structure, to higher coupling memories, and show that these yield improved belief propagation (BP) thresholds as compared to the original BCC e…
In this paper we study the iterative decoding threshold performance of non-binary spatially-coupled low-density parity-check (NB-SC-LDPC) code ensembles for both the binary erasure channel (BEC) and the binary-input additive white Gaussian noise channel (BIAWGNC), with particular emphasis on windowed decoding (WD). We consider both (2,4)-regular and (3,6)-regular NB-SC-LDPC code ensembles constructed using protographs and compute their thresholds using protograph versions of NB density evolution and NB extrinsic information transfer analysis. For these code ensembles, we show that WD of NB-SC-…
For a given family of spatially coupled codes, we prove that the LP threshold on the BSC of the graph cover ensemble is the same as the LP threshold on the BSC of the derived spatially coupled ensemble. This result is in contrast with the fact that the BP threshold of the derived spatially coupled ensemble is believed to be larger than the BP threshold of the graph cover ensemble as noted by the work of Kudekar et al. (2011, 2012). To prove this, we establish some properties related to the dual witness for LP decoding which was introduced by Feldman et al. (2007) and simplified by Daskalakis e…
Spatially coupled codes have been of interest recently owing to their superior performance over memoryless binary-input channels. The performance is good both asymptotically, since the belief propagation thresholds approach capacity, as well as for finite lengths, since degree-2 variables that result in high error floors can be completely avoided. However, to realize the promised good performance, one needs large blocklengths. This in turn implies a large latency and decoding complexity. For the memoryless binary erasure channel, we consider the decoding of spatially coupled codes through a wi…
Spatially coupled, parallel concatenated codes (SC-PCCs) have been shown to approach channel capacity when decoded using optimal iterative methods. However, under complexity constraints such decoding strategies can result in unacceptable power and latency costs. In this work, we employ convolutional self-orthogonal component codes along with low-complexity, suboptimal a posteriori probability (APP) threshold decoders with SC-PCCs to reduce decoding complexity. The proposed code design is faster, more energy efficient, and easier to implement than optimal methods, while offering significant cod…
In this paper, we give an overview of spatially coupled turbo codes (SC-TCs), the spatial coupling of parallel and serially concatenated convolutional codes, recently introduced by the authors. For presentation purposes, we focus on spatially coupled serially concatenated codes (SC-SCCs). We review the main principles of SC-TCs and discuss their exact density evolution (DE) analysis on the binary erasure channel. We also consider the construction of a family of rate-compatible SC-SCCs with simple 4-state component encoders. For all considered code rates, threshold saturation of the belief prop…
Spatially coupled low-density parity-check codes show an outstanding performance under the low-complexity belief propagation (BP) decoding algorithm. They exhibit a peculiar convergence phenomenon above the BP threshold of the underlying non-coupled ensemble, with a wave-like convergence propagating through the spatial dimension of the graph, allowing to approach the MAP threshold. We focus on this particularly interesting regime in between the BP and MAP thresholds. On the binary erasure channel, it has been proved that the information propagates with a constant speed toward the successful de…
We consider chains of random constraint satisfaction models that are spatially coupled across a finite window along the chain direction. We investigate their phase diagram at zero temperature using the survey propagation formalism and the interpolation method. We prove that the SAT-UNSAT phase transition threshold of an infinite chain is identical to the one of the individual standard model, and is therefore not affected by spatial coupling. We compute the survey propagation complexity using population dynamics as well as large degree approximations, and determine the survey propagation thresh…
Recently, a new class of codes, called sparse superposition or sparse regression codes, has been proposed for communication over the AWGN channel. It has been proven that they achieve capacity using power allocation and various forms of iterative decoding. Empirical evidence has also strongly suggested that the codes achieve capacity when spatial coupling and approximate message passing decoding are used, without need of power allocation. In this note we prove that state evolution (which tracks message passing) indeed saturates the potential threshold of the underlying code ensemble, which app…
We investigate spatially coupled code ensembles. For transmission over the binary erasure channel, it was recently shown that spatial coupling increases the belief propagation threshold of the ensemble to essentially the maximum a-priori threshold of the underlying component ensemble. This explains why convolutional LDPC ensembles, originally introduced by Felstrom and Zigangirov, perform so well over this channel. We show that the equivalent result holds true for transmission over general binary-input memoryless output-symmetric channels. More precisely, given a desired error probability and …
In this paper, we introduce the concept of spatially coupled turbo codes (SC-TCs), as the turbo codes counterpart of spatially coupled low-density parity-check codes. We describe spatial coupling for both Berrou et al. and Benedetto et al. parallel and serially concatenated codes. For the binary erasure channel, we derive the exact density evolution (DE) equations of SC-TCs by using the method proposed by Kurkoski et al. to compute the decoding erasure probability of convolutional encoders. Using DE, we then analyze the asymptotic behavior of SC-TCs. We observe that the belief propagation (BP)…
Kudekar et al. recently proved that for transmission over the binary erasure channel (BEC), spatial coupling of LDPC codes increases the BP threshold of the coupled ensemble to the MAP threshold of the underlying LDPC codes. One major drawback of the capacity-achieving spatially-coupled LDPC codes is that one needs to increase the column and row weight of parity-check matrices of the underlying LDPC codes. It is proved, that Hsu-Anastasopoulos (HA) codes and MacKay-Neal (MN) codes achieve the capacity of memoryless binary-input symmetric-output channels under MAP decoding with bounded column a…
In this paper we investigate the effect of spatial coupling applied to the recently-proposed coded slotted ALOHA (CSA) random access protocol. Thanks to the bridge between the graphical model describing the iterative interference cancelation process of CSA over the random access frame and the erasure recovery process of low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes over the binary erasure channel (BEC), we propose an access protocol which is inspired by the convolutional LDPC code construction. The proposed protocol exploits the terminations of its graphical model to achieve the spatial coupling effec…
In this paper we propose a new class of spatially coupled codes based on repeat-accumulate protographs. We show that spatially coupled repeat-accumulate codes have several advantages over spatially coupled low-density parity-check codes including simpler encoders and slightly higher code rates than spatially coupled low-density parity-check codes with similar thresholds and decoding complexity (as measured by the Tanner graph edge density).
For finite coupling lengths, terminated spatially coupled low-density parity-check (SC-LDPC) codes show a non-negligible rate-loss. In this paper, we investigate if this rate loss can be mitigated by tail-biting SC-LDPC codes in conjunction with iterative demapping of higher order modulation formats. Therefore, we examine the BP threshold of different coupled and uncoupled ensembles. A comparison between the decoding thresholds approximated by EXIT charts and the density evolution results of the coupled and uncoupled ensemble is given. We investigate the effect and potential of different label…
In this paper, we construct protograph-based spatially coupled low-density parity-check (SC-LDPC) codes by coupling together a series of L disjoint, or uncoupled, LDPC code Tanner graphs into a single coupled chain. By varying L, we obtain a flexible family of code ensembles with varying rates and frame lengths that can share the same encoding and decoding architecture for arbitrary L. We demonstrate that the resulting codes combine the best features of optimized irregular and regular codes in one design: capacity approaching iterative belief propagation (BP) decoding thresholds and linear gro…
We introduce generalized spatially coupled parallel concatenated codes (GSC-PCCs), a class of spatially coupled turbo-like codes obtained by coupling parallel concatenated codes (PCCs) with a fraction of information bits repeated before the PCC encoding. GSC-PCCs can be seen as a generalization of the original spatially coupled parallel concatenated convolutional codes (SC-PCCs) proposed by Moloudi et al. [1]. To characterize the asymptotic performance of GSC-PCCs, we derive the corresponding density evolution equations and compute their decoding thresholds. We show that the proposed codes hav…
We consider transmission over a wiretap channel where both the main channel and the wiretapper's channel are Binary Erasure Channels (BEC). We use convolutional LDPC ensembles based on the coset encoding scheme. More precisely, we consider regular two edge type convolutional LDPC ensembles. We show that such a construction achieves the whole rate-equivocation region of the BEC wiretap channel. Convolutional LDPC ensemble were introduced by Felström and Zigangirov and are known to have excellent thresholds. Recently, Kudekar, Richardson, and Urbanke proved that the phenomenon of "Spatial Coupli…
Codes constructed from connected spatially coupled low-density parity-check code (SC-LDPCC) chains are proposed and analyzed. It is demonstrated that connecting coupled chains results in improved iterative decoding performance. The constructed protograph ensembles have better iterative decoding thresholds compared to an individual SC-LDPCC chain and require less computational complexity per bit when operating in the near-threshold region. In addition, it is shown that the proposed constructions are asymptotically good in terms of minimum distance.
Generalized low-density parity-check (GLDPC) codes are a class of LDPC codes in which the standard single parity check (SPC) constraints are replaced by constraints defined by a linear block code. These stronger constraints typically result in improved error floor performance, due to better minimum distance and trapping set properties, at a cost of some increased decoding complexity. In this paper, we study spatially coupled generalized low-density parity-check (SC-GLDPC) codes and present a comprehensive analysis of these codes, including: (1) an iterative decoding threshold analysis of SC-GL…
Convolutional low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes (or spatially-coupled codes) have now been shown to achieve capacity on binary-input memoryless symmetric channels. The principle behind this surprising result is the threshold-saturation phenomenon, which is defined by the belief-propagation threshold of the spatially-coupled ensemble saturating to a fundamental threshold defined by the uncoupled system. Previously, the authors demonstrated that potential functions can be used to provide a simple proof of threshold saturation for coupled scalar recursions. In this paper, we present a simple …
We consider spatially-coupled protograph-based LDPC codes for the three terminal erasure relay channel. It is observed that BP threshold value, the maximal erasure probability of the channel for which decoding error probability converges to zero, of spatially-coupled codes, in particular spatially-coupled MacKay-Neal code, is close to the theoretical limit for the relay channel. Empirical results suggest that spatially-coupled protograph-based LDPC codes have great potential to achieve theoretical limit of a general relay channel.
In this paper we consider the generalization of binary spatially coupled low-density parity-check (SC-LDPC) codes to finite fields GF$(q)$, $q\geq 2$, and develop design rules for $q$-ary SC-LDPC code ensembles based on their iterative belief propagation (BP) decoding thresholds, with particular emphasis on low-latency windowed decoding (WD). We consider transmission over both the binary erasure channel (BEC) and the binary-input additive white Gaussian noise channel (BIAWGNC) and present results for a variety of $(J,K)$-regular SC-LDPC code ensembles constructed over GF$(q)$ using protographs…
Spatially-coupled low-density parity-check codes attract much attention due to their capacity-achieving performance and a memory-efficient sliding-window decoding algorithm. On the other hand, the encoder needs to solve large linear equations to terminate the encoding process. In this paper, we propose modified spatially-coupled codes. The modified $(\dl,\dr,L)$ codes have less rate-loss, i.e., higher coding rate, and have the same threshold as $(\dl,\dr,L)$ codes and are efficiently terminable by using an accumulator.
Spatially coupled turbo-like codes (SC-TCs) have been shown to have excellent decoding thresholds due to the threshold saturation effect. Furthermore, even for moderate block lengths, simulation results demonstrate very good bit error rate performance (BER) in the waterfall region. In this paper, we discuss the effect of spatial coupling on the performance of TCs in the finite block-length regime. We investigate the effect of coupling on the error-floor performance of SC-TCs by establishing conditions under which spatial coupling either preserves or improves the minimum distance of TCs. This a…
Spatially-Coupled (SC)-LDPC codes are known to have outstanding error-correction performance and low decoding latency. Whereas previous works on LDPC and SC-LDPC codes mostly take either an asymptotic or a finite-length design approach, in this paper we present a unified framework for jointly optimizing the codes' thresholds and cycle counts to address both regimes. The framework is based on efficient traversal and pruning of the code search space, building on the fact that the performance of a protograph-based SC-LDPC code depends on some characteristics of the code's partitioning matrix, whi…
Recently, it was observed that spatially-coupled LDPC code ensembles approach the Shannon capacity for a class of binary-input memoryless symmetric (BMS) channels. The fundamental reason for this was attributed to a "threshold saturation" phenomena derived by Kudekar, Richardson and Urbanke. In particular, it was shown that the belief propagation (BP) threshold of the spatially coupled codes is equal to the maximum a posteriori (MAP) decoding threshold of the underlying constituent codes. In this sense, the BP threshold is saturated to its maximum value. Moreover, it has been empirically obser…
We analyze a class of high performance, low decoding-data-flow error-correcting codes suitable for high bit-rate optical-fiber communication systems. A spatially-coupled split-component ensemble is defined, generalizing from the most important codes of this class, staircase codes and braided block codes, and preserving a deterministic partitioning of component-code bits over code blocks. Our analysis focuses on low-complexity iterative algebraic decoding, which, for the binary erasure channel, is equivalent to a generalization of the peeling decoder. Using the differential equation method, we …
Low-density parity-check (LDPC) convolutional codes (or spatially-coupled codes) have been shown to approach capacity on the binary erasure channel (BEC) and binary-input memoryless symmetric channels. The mechanism behind this spectacular performance is the threshold saturation phenomenon, which is characterized by the belief-propagation threshold of the spatially-coupled ensemble increasing to an intrinsic noise threshold defined by the uncoupled system. In this paper, we present a simple proof of threshold saturation that applies to a broad class of coupled scalar recursions. The conditions…
We study LDPC codes for the channel with $2^m$-ary input $\underline{x}\in \mathbb{F}_2^m$ and output $\underline{y}=\underline{x}+\underline{z}\in \mathbb{F}_2^m$. The receiver knows a subspace $V\subset \mathbb{F}_2^m$ from which $\underline{z}=\underline{y}-\underline{x}$ is uniformly chosen. Or equivalently, the receiver receives an affine subspace $\underline{y}-V$ where $\underline{x}$ lies. We consider a joint iterative decoder involving the channel detector and the LDPC decoder. The decoding system considered in this paper can be viewed as a simplified model of the joint iterative deco…
In this paper, we study the density evolution analysis of spatially coupled low-density parity-check (SC-LDPC) codes over binary input additive white Gaussian noise (BIAWGN) channels under the belief propagation (BP) decoding algorithm. Using reciprocal channel approximation and Gaussian approximation, we propose averaging techniques for the density evolution of SC-LDPC codes over BIAWGN channels. We show that the proposed techniques can closely predict the decoding threshold while offering reduced complexity compared to the existing multi-edge-type density evolution.
We propose a new type of ultimate-Shannon-limit-approaching codes called spatially coupled protograph-based low-density parity-check Hadamard convolutional codes (SC-PLDPCH-CCs), which are constructed by spatially coupling PLDPC-Hadamard block codes. We develop an efficient decoding algorithm that combines pipeline decoding and layered scheduling for the decoding of SC-PLDPCH-CCs, and analyze the latency and complexity of the decoder. To estimate the decoding thresholds of SC-PLDPCHCCs, we first propose a layered protograph extrinsic information transfer (PEXIT) algorithm to evaluate the thres…
A new class of spatially-coupled turbo-like codes (SC-TCs), dubbed generalized spatially coupled parallel concatenated codes (GSC-PCCs), is introduced. These codes are constructed by applying spatial coupling on parallel concatenated codes (PCCs) with a fraction of information bits repeated $q$ times. GSC-PCCs can be seen as a generalization of the original spatially-coupled parallel concatenated codes proposed by Moloudi et al. [2]. To characterize the asymptotic performance of GSC-PCCs, we derive the corresponding density evolution equations and compute their decoding thresholds. The thresho…
We consider spatially coupled low-density parity-check (SC-LDPC) codes within a non-orthogonal interleave division multiple access (IDMA) scheme to avoid cumbersome degree profile matching of the LDPC code components to the iterative multi-user detector (MUD). Besides excellent decoding thresholds, the approach benefits from the possibility of using rather simple and regular underlying block LDPC codes owing to the universal behavior of the resulting coupled code with respect to the channel front-end, i.e., the iterative MUD. Furthermore, an additional outer repetition code makes the scheme fl…
Recent development in compressed sensing (CS) has revealed that the use of a special design of measurement matrix, namely the spatially-coupled matrix, can achieve the information-theoretic limit of CS. In this paper, we consider the measurement matrix which consists of the spatially-coupled \emph{orthogonal} matrices. One example of such matrices are the randomly selected discrete Fourier transform (DFT) matrices. Such selection enjoys a less memory complexity and a faster multiplication procedure. Our contributions are the replica calculations to find the mean-square-error (MSE) of the Bayes…
We consider spatially coupled code ensembles. A particular instance are convolutional LDPC ensembles. It was recently shown that, for transmission over the binary erasure channel, this coupling increases the belief propagation threshold of the ensemble to the maximum a-priori threshold of the underlying component ensemble. We report on empirical evidence which suggest that the same phenomenon also occurs when transmission takes place over a general binary memoryless symmetric channel. This is confirmed both by simulations as well as by computing EBP GEXIT curves and by comparing the empirical …
We establish the existence of wave-like solutions to spatially coupled graphical models which, in the large size limit, can be characterized by a one-dimensional real-valued state. This is extended to a proof of the threshold saturation phenomenon for all such models, which includes spatially coupled irregular LDPC codes over the BEC, but also addresses hard-decision decoding for transmission over general channels, the CDMA multiple-access problem, compressed sensing, and some statistical physics models. For traditional uncoupled iterative coding systems with two components and transmission ov…