A Flexible FPGA-Based Stochastic Decoder for 5G LDPC Codes

Iterative stochastic decoding is an alternative to standard fixed-point decoding of low-density parity check (LDPC) codes that can be used to minimize inter-node routing. A flexible field-programmable gate array (FPGA)-based stochastic decoding (SD) hardware architecture is presented in this paper. The architecture is designed to decode different code rates of LDPC codes that comply with the fifth-generation (5G) New Radio (NR) standard. This decoder’s runtime flexibility is desirable as it switches to a better-performing code rate automatically based on the channel conditions without the extra time needed to reprogram the FPGA. An offline design method is implemented to generate the hardware description language (HDL) code description of the decoder for the required code rate set, which is further synthesized and integrated into a Xilinx Kintex-7-series FPGA board to determine the hardware resource utilisation and processing throughput. Synopsys design tools were employed during both the simulation and synthesis stages in combination with TSMC 65 nm CMOS standard cell technology to facilitate comparative analysis. Compared with state-of-the-art designs, the proposed architecture reduces hardware utilization by up to 26% and increases energy efficiency by 52%.