Efficient Scheduling of Serial Iterative Decoding for Zigzag Decodable Fountain Codes

Abstract: Fountain codes are erasure correcting codes realizing reliable communication systems for the multicast on the Internet. The zigzag decodable fountain (ZDF) code is one of generalization of the Raptor code, i.e, applying shift operation to generate the output packets. The ZDF code is decoded by a two-stage iterative decoding algorithm, which combines the packet-wise peeling algorithm and the bit-wise peeling algorithm. By the bit-wise peeling algorithm and shift operation, ZDF codes outperform Raptor codes under iterative decoding in terms of decoding erasure rate and overhead. However, the bit-wise peeling algorithm spends long decoding time. This paper proposes a fast bit-wise decoding algorithm for the ZDF codes. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm drastically reduces the decoding time compared with the existing algorithm.