FPGA Implementation of a Clockless Stochastic LDPC Decoder

Abstract

This thesis presents a clockless stochastic low-density parity-check (LDPC) decoder implemented on a Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA). Stochastic computing reduces the wiring complexity necessary for decoding by replacing operations such as multiplication and division with simple logic gates. Clockless decoding increases the throughput of the decoder by eliminating the requirement for node signals to be synchronized after each decoding cycle. With this partial-update algorithm the decoder’s speed is limited by the average wire delay of the interleaver rather than the worst-case delay. This type of decoder has been simulated in the past but not implemented on silicon. The design is implemented on an ALTERA Stratix IV EP4SGX230 FPGA and the frame error rate (FER) performance, throughput and power consumption are presented for (96,48) and (204,102) decoders.