On Unequal Error Protection LDPC codes based on plotkin-type constructions

In this paper, a family of Unequal Error-Protection (UEP) Low-Density Parity-Check (LDPC) codes, based on Plotkintype of constructions, is introduced. The codes are decoded in multiple stages in such a manner that the order of decoding determines the level of error protection. The level of UEP among the code bits can be further increased by properly combining structured and random-like LDPC component codes with carefully chosen properties, and by using some new reliability features. The proposed scheme also offers a good trade-off between code performance on one side and encoding/decoding and storage complexity on the other side. To the best of our knowledge, the proposed approach represents the first iterative UEP method with analytically provable properties.