Genetic Optimization of LDPC Codes to Improve the Correction of Burst Errors

Error correction plays a crucial role when transmitting data from the source to the destination through a noisy channel. It has found many applications in television broadcasting services, data transmission in radiation harsh environment (e. g. space probes or physical experiments) or memory storages influenced by Single Event Effects (SEE). Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) codes provide an important technique to correct these errors. The parameters of error correction depend both on the decoding algorithm and on the LDPC code given by the parity-check matrix. Therefore, a particular design of the parity-check matrix is necessary. Moreover, with the development of high performance computing, the application of genetic optimization algorithms to design the parity-check matrices has been enabled. In this article, we present the application of the genetic optimization algorithm to produce error correcting codes with special properties, especially the burst types of errors. The results show the bounds of correction capabilities for various code lengths and various redundancies of LDPC codes. This is particularly useful when designing systems under the influence of noise combined with the application of the error correction codes.