Flash memory devices are winning the competition for storage density against magnetic recording devices. This outcome results from advances in physics that allow storage of more than one bit per cell, coupled with advances in signal processing that reduce the effect of physical instabilities. Constrained codes are used in storage to avoid problematic patterns. Recently, we introduced binary symmetric lexicographically-ordered constrained codes (LOCO codes) for data storage and transmission. This paper introduces simple constrained codes that support non-binary physical gates in multi, triple, quad, and the currently-in-development penta-level cell (M/T/Q/P-LC) Flash memories. The new codes can be easily modified if problematic patterns change with time. These codes are designed to mitigate inter-cell interference, which is a critical source of error in Flash devices. The new codes are called q-ary asymmetric LOCO codes (QA-LOCO codes), and the construction subsumes codes previously designed for single-level cell (SLC) Flash devices (ALOCO codes). QA-LOCO codes work for a Flash device with any number, q, of levels per cell. For q ≥ 4, we show that QA-LOCO codes can achieve rates greater than 0.95log 2 q information bits per coded symbol. Capacity-achieving rates, affordable encoding-decoding complexity, and ease of reconfigurability support the growing improvement of M/T/Q/P-LC Flash memory devices, as well as lifecycle management as the characteristics of these devices change with time.
more »
« less
Asymmetric LOCO Codes: Constrained Codes for Flash Memories
In data storage and data transmission, certain patterns are more likely to be subject to error when written (transmitted) onto the media. In magnetic recording systems with binary data and bipolar non-return-to-zero signaling, patterns that have insufficient separation between consecutive transitions exacerbate inter-symbol interference. Constrained codes are used to eliminate such error-prone patterns. A recent example is a new family of capacity-achieving constrained codes, named lexicographically-ordered constrained codes (LOCO codes). LOCO codes are symmetric, that is, the set of forbidden patterns is closed under taking pattern complements. LOCO codes are suboptimal in terms of rate when used in Flash devices where block erasure is employed since the complement of an error-prone pattern is not detrimental in these devices. This paper introduces asymmetric LOCO codes (A-LOCO codes), which are lexicographically-ordered constrained codes that forbid only those patterns that are detrimental for Flash performance. A-LOCO codes are also capacity-achieving, and at finite-lengths, they offer higher rates than the available state-of-the-art constrained codes designed for the same goal. The mapping-demapping between the index and the codeword in A-LOCO codes allows low-complexity encoding and decoding algorithms that are simpler than their LOCO counterparts.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 1717602
- PAR ID:
- 10191392
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- 57th Annual Allerton Conference on Communications, Control and Computing
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 124 to 131
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
In order to meet the demands of data-hungry applications, data storage devices are required to be increasingly denser. Various sources of error appear with this increase in density. Multi-dimensional (MD) graph-based codes are capable of mitigating error sources like interference and channel non-uniformity in dense storage devices. Recently, a technique was proposed to enhance the performance of MD spatially-coupled codes that are based on circulants. The technique carefully relocates circulants to minimize the number of short cycles. However, cycles become more detrimental when they combine together to form more advanced objects, e.g., absorbing sets, including low-weight codewords. In this paper, we show how MD relocations can be exploited to minimize the number of detrimental objects in the graph of an MD code. Moreover, we demonstrate the savings in the number of relocation arrangements earned by focusing on objects rather than cycles. Our technique is applicable to a wide variety of one-dimensional (OD) codes. Simulation results reveal significant lifetime gains in practical Flash systems achieved by MD codes designed using our technique compared with OD codes having similar parameters.more » « less
-
In general, the generator matrix sparsity is a critical factor in determining the encoding complexity of a linear code. Further, certain applications, e.g., distributed crowdsourcing schemes utilizing linear codes, require most or even all the columns of the generator matrix to have some degree of sparsity. In this paper, we leverage polar codes and the well-established channel polarization to design capacity-achieving codes with a certain constraint on the weights of all the columns in the generator matrix (GM) while having a low-complexity decoding algorithm. We first show that given a binary-input memoryless symmetric (BMS) channel $$W$$ and a constant $$s \in (0, 1]$$ , there exists a polarization kernel such that the corresponding polar code is capacity-achieving with the rate of polarization $s/2$ , and the GM column weights being bounded from above by $$N^{s}$$ . To improve the sparsity versus error rate trade-off, we devise a column-splitting algorithm and two coding schemes for BEC and then for general BMS channels. The polar-based codes generated by the two schemes inherit several fundamental properties of polar codes with the original $$2 \times 2$$ kernel including the decay in error probability, decoding complexity, and the capacity-achieving property. Furthermore, they demonstrate the additional property that their GM column weights are bounded from above sublinearly in $$N$$ , while the original polar codes have some column weights that are linear in $$N$$ . In particular, for any BEC and $$\beta < 0.5$$ , the existence of a sequence of capacity-achieving polar-based codes where all the GM column weights are bounded from above by $$N^{\lambda} $$ with $$\lambda \approx 0.585$$ , and with the error probability bounded by $${\mathcal {O}}(2^{-N^{\beta }})$$ under a decoder with complexity $${\mathcal {O}}(N\log N)$$ , is shown. The existence of similar capacity-achieving polar-based codes with the same decoding complexity is shown for any BMS channel and $$\beta < 0.5$$ with $$\lambda \approx 0.631$$ .more » « less
-
In this paper the theory and design of codes capable of correcting t insertion/deletion of the symbol 0 in each and every bucket of zeros (i. e., zeros in between two consecutive ones) are studied. It is shown that this problem is related to the zero error capacity achieving codes in limited magnitude error channel. Close to optimal non-systematic code designs and the encoding/decoding algorithms are described.more » « less
-
Quantum low-density parity-check (QLDPC) codes have emerged as a promising technique for quantum error correction. A variety of decoders have been proposed for QLDPC codes and many utilize belief propagation (BP) decoding in some fashion. However, the use of BP decoding for degenerate QLDPC codes is known to have issues with convergence. These issues are typically attributed to short cycles in the Tanner graph and error patterns with the same syndrome due to code degeneracy. In this work, we propose a decoder for QLDPC codes based on BP guided decimation (BPGD), which has been previously studied for constraint satisfaction and lossy compression problems. This decimation process is applicable to both binary and quaternary BP and it involves sequentially freezing the value of the most reliable qubits to encourage BP convergence. We find that BPGD significantly reduces the BP failure rate due to non-convergence, achieving performance on par with BP with ordered statistics decoding and BP with stabilizer inactivation, without the need to solve systems of linear equations. To explore how and why BPGD improves performance, we discuss several interpretations of BPGD and their connection to BP syndrome decoding.more » « less
An official website of the United States government

