SC-LDPC Code Design for Half-Duplex Relay Channels

This paper studies code design for the half-duplex relay channel when the transmissions take place over binary input additive white Gaussian noise (BIAWGN) channels. Using the decode-forward relay protocol, we design the relay code based on a spatially coupled low-density parity-check (SC-LDPC) code. We show a low complexity density evolution analysis for the proposed relay code. From the density evolution results, we observe that the proposed spatially coupled relay code achieves a capacity approaching performance. We also observe that the proposed code outperforms existing optimized LDPC relay codes. Through simulation results, we evaluate the finite-length performance of the proposed code.