1476
9, SEPTEMBER 2015
A Construction of Physical-Layer Systematic
Raptor Codes Based on Protographs
Shiuan-Hao Kuo, Huang-Chang Lee, Yeong-Luh Ueng, Member, IEEE, and Mao-Chao Lin, Member, IEEE
Abstract—A construction of physical-layer Raptor (PLR) codes
based on protographs is proposed. We first set up a sequence of
signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs). For each SNR, we employ a modified
protograph EXIT analysis to find the extra check nodes in addition
to the existing check nodes so as to meet the threshold required
by the outer low-density parity check code. PLR codes which are
capacity-approaching for a wide SNR range can be obtained using
the proposed construction.
Index Terms—Protograph, physical-layer Raptor code.
I. I NTRODUCTION
L T CODE [1] is a coding scheme, which was originally
proposed to cope with package loss. With a low-density
parity-check (LDPC) [2] code as precoding to the LT code, we
have a Raptor code [3]. A physical-layer Raptor (PLR) code
which is designed for physical-layer channels can be considered
as a continuous version of incremental redundancy (IR) based
hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) [4].
For the PLR code, a conventional design is to optimize its
output degree distribution. Optimization for a certain signal-to-
noise ratio (SNR) is studied in [5], [6]. Adaptive schemes for
non-systematic LT-accumulator code [7] and non-systematic
Raptor codes [8] that can work well over a wide SNR range are
designed by incrementally adjusting output degree distributions
according to the channel condition.
In this letter, we resort to the concept of LDPC codes using
protographs [9] for designing PLR codes. A protograph is a
small graph prototype of Tanner graph. By applying a copy-
and-permute process to the protograph called lifting, large
derived graphs of various sizes can be obtained. It is indicated
in [9] that lifting process with circulant permutation is favorable
to efficient hardware implementations of associated codes.
In [10], a protograph EXIT (pEXIT) method is developed
for performance analysis of protograph LDPC codes. In [11],
a punctured-node protograph-based Raptor-like (PN-PBRL)
LDPC code has been constructed through an incremental design
without considering degree distribution, where a sequence of
protograph LDPC codes V0 , V1 , V2 , . . . with decreasing rates
are extended from a rate-R0 protograph mother code V0 where
Manuscript received February 4, 2015; accepted June 15, 2015. Date of
publication June 23, 2015; date of current version September 4, 2015. This
work was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology of the ROC
under Grant MOST 103-2221-E-002-087-MY3 and MOST 103-2221-E-007-
025-MY3. The associate editor coordinating the review of this paper and
approving it for publication was Z. Ma.
S.-H. Kuo and M.-C. Lin are with the Graduate Institute of Communi-
cation Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei 106, Taiwan (e-mail:
d96942022@ntu.edu.tw; mclin@ntu.edu.tw).
H.-C. Lee and Y.-L. Ueng are with the Department of Electrical Engineering
and the Institute of Communications Engineering, National Tsing Hua Uni-
versity, Hsinchu 30013, Taiwan (e-mail: akula.lee@gmail.com; ylueng@ee.
nthu.edu.tw).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LCOMM.2015.2448678
1558-2558 © 2015 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
IEEE COMMUNICATIONS LETTERS, VOL. 19, NO.
R0 = 6/7 or 8/10. Vi+1 is constructed by adding new variable
nodes with check sums to the existing nodes of Vi , where the
check sums should yield the lowest decodable SNR for Vi+1 .
The proposed PLR code employs the ideas of pEXIT in
[10] and incremental design in [11]. The pEXIT for LDPC
codes can be modified for applications to the systematic PLR
codes by adding channel values to check nodes of the inner
LT code in computing the mutual information. For the PLR
code design, we use a protograph outer LDPC code V with
rate 0.95. There is a mutual information (MI) threshold IV
which allows asymptotically error-free performances for V. A
modified pEXIT analysis for the protograph LT code C is used
to calculate IC which is the MI obtained from the message
passing between the variable nodes in the systematic part and
the check nodes of the LT code. Suppose that at a certain SNR
γi , IC ≥ IV is obtained. We then need to find the least amount
of extra check nodes so that IC ≥ IV still holds for a lower
SNR γi+1 . In this way, we would like to search for a PLR
code with best throughput performance for a wide SNR range.
To reduce the search load, we consider a simple procedure
to construct PLR codes with regular check node degrees first.
Then, a somewhat more complicated procedure for searching
PLR codes with irregular check node degrees is proposed.
Numerical results show that capacity-approaching throughput
efficiency can be achieved in a wide SNR range.
II. S OME P RELIMINARIES
The PLR code V◦C is a serially concatenated code with an
outer LDPC code V and an inner LT code C. Each information
block with k bits is firstly fed to the LDPC encoder to yield n
coded bits of V, which are also referred as the intermediate bits
of V◦C. For a systematic PLR code, the first n code bits of C
are also the n code bits of V, while the other code bits of C will
be referred as the output bits or check bits of C. To obtain an LT
output (check) bit co with a predefined degree do , the encoder
will select do intermediate bits and co is the binary sum of these
do intermediate bits. The LT encoder will generate output bits
continuously until an ACK is received.
For a PLR code, the decoding capability of the outer LDPC
code V is marked by a threshold IV . For a PLR code, it is desired
to find the least number of check nodes so that the iterative
decoding of C can obtain the threshold
 IV . Conventionally, an
output degree distribution (x) = d d xd is used to describe
the LT code C, where d indicates the probability of an LT
output bit having degree d. In this letter, the construction of C
is designed from a different approach for which the information
of (x) is not needed.
III. P ROTOGRAPH -BASED R APTOR C ODES
Fig. 1 illustrates the protograph for the proposed proto-
graph Raptor (PR) code, where πij is a shorthand for the
KUO et al.: A CONSTRUCTION OF PHYSICAL-LAYER SYSTEMATIC RAPTOR CODES BASED ON PROTOGRAPHS
Fig. 1. Protograph of the proposed PR code, where vi , 1 ≤ i ≤ KB , denotes the
pVN and cj , 1 ≤ j ≤ NB , denotes the pCN of the LT code.
copy-and-permute procedure. A KB × NB base generator matrix
B = [bij] = [b1 , b2 , · · · , bNB ] is constructed for the LT code,
where KB is the total number of the protograph variable nodes
(pVNs) and the entry bij denotes the number of edges con-
necting the ith pVN and the jth protograph check node (pCN).
 B
The degree of the jth pCN is K
i=1 bij . The lifting operation is
processed by replacing each element in the base matrix with
a q-by-q permutation matrix that connects q variable nodes
(intermediate nodes) and q check nodes (output nodes). In this
way, the q copies of the protograph are interconnected. The
derived graph is q times larger than the original protograph but
preserving the same rate and degree distributions. The number
of variable nodes of C is qKB . We set bij ∈ {0, 1, 2}. Hence,
parallel edges are allowed in the protograph as shown in Fig. 1.
However, there will be no parallel edges after lifting. Using
B = [b1 , · · · , b−1 , b ], we can generate  pCN (q check
nodes), where 0 ≤  ≤ NB . Since the LT code is systematic, its
code rate is RC, = KB /( + KB ). The overall rate of the PR
code is nk RC,  . The maximum length of C is q(KB + NB ).
To determine the achievable performance of the LT code using
B , we used a protograph EXIT (pEXIT) analysis modified from
that used in [10] for LDPC codes. For the Gaussian noise chan-
nel with noise variance σ 2 , we define SNR as γ = Es /σ 2 , where
Es is the energy per code symbol. Let J(σ02 ) [8] be the mutual
information (MI) between the transmitted equally-likely binary
signal and the received LLR (log-likelihood ratio), where σ02 =
4γ is the variance of the received LLR. As in [10], the MI for up-
dating the message passing from the ith pVN to the jth pCN is
⎛ same. If  < NB , increase  by 1 and go to Step 2 to
 determine the next column. Otherwise, the algorithm is
Ivc (i, j) = J ⎝ bis J −1 (Icv (i, s))
s =j
⎞ We now compare the results of the check-regular PR codes
+ (bij − 1)J −1 (Icv (i, j)) + σ02 ⎠, if bij = 0, (1)
and Ivc (i, j) = 0 if bij = 0. Since the LT code bits are associated
to the check nodes, the MI for updating the message passing
from the jth pCN to the ith pVN in [10] must include the
channel values and hence is modified as
⎛ the PR codes, we devised three codes respectively with regular
 output degrees 31, 15 and 7 using the parameters of KB = 100,
Icv (i, j) = 1 − J ⎝ bsj J −1 (1 − Ivc (s, j)) + (bij − 1)
s =i
⎞
 
· J −1 (1 − Ivc (i, j)) + J −1 1 − J σ02 ⎠, if bij = 0, (2)
1477
and Icv (i, j) = 0 if bij = 0. The above equations are evaluated
iteratively until the maximum number of iterations is reached.
The MI of decoded LLR at the ith pVN is the same as in [10],

Iv (i) = J bis J −1 (Icv (i, s)) + σ02 . (3)
s
Finally, we define the average MI of LT decoder  for transmis-
sion up to the th pCN to be ĪC (B , γ ) = K1B Iv (i).
IV. C ONSTRUCTION OF C HECK -R EGULAR PR C ODES
We first investigate the construction of the check-regular LT
codes. The B matrix is constructed in a column-by-column
manner. Suppose that the B−1 have been determined. To obtain
the th column of B, we randomly generate Q b̃ vectors. Let
B̃ = [b1 , · · · , b−1 , b̃ ]. The pEXIT technique is applied to
these Q B̃ matrices to determine the best candidate b which
maximizes the average decoded MI ĪC (B̃ , γi ).
The pEXIT analysis is first applied to B̃ at a relatively high
SNR γ1 . Once the average decoded MI at γi , ĪC (B , γi ) ≥ IV ,
where B = [b1 , · · · , b ], the following columns should be
designed for a lower SNR γi+1 . Suppose that ĪC (B , γi−1 ) ≥ IV
only if  ≥ pi − 1 and ĪC (B , γi ) ≥ IV only if  ≥ pi+1 − 1.
The columns bpi , · · · , bpi+1 −1 are the extra columns deter-
mined by the pEXIT analysis under SNR γi . In other words,
the extra number of pCNs required to achieve IV under SNR γi
is pi = pi+1 − pi . The design target is to keep pi as small as
possible for all i. The design process is as follows.
Protograph Raptor (PR) Algorithm:
Step 1 Choose KB , NB , IV and an SNR set {γ1 , γ2 , · · · }, where
γi > γi+1 for all i. Initialize the SNR index i to 1 and
the column index  to 1.
Step 2 Randomly generate Q b̃ vectors and obtain their as-
sociated B̃ = [b1 , · · · , b−1 , b̃ ] matrices. For each
candidate B̃ , use pEXIT to evaluate its decoded
MI ĪC (B̃ , γi ). Let b = arg max ĪC (B̃ , γi ) and B =
b̃
[b1 , · · · , b ].
Step 3 If ĪC (B , γi ) ≥ IV , set i = i + 1 so as to switch the SNR
from γi to γi+1 . Otherwise, the SNR value remains the
completed with B = BNB .
to the conventional systematic Raptor codes over the Gaussian
channel optimized for a single SNR. The outer code V is a
protograph LDPC code with rate nk = 0.95. For the conven-
tional Raptor codes, we follow the optimization method in [6] to
obtain three output degree distributions, 1 (x) = 0.5420x30 +
0.4580x31, 2 (x) = 0.7128x13 + 0.2783x14 + 0.0089x100 and
3 (x) = 0.1585x7 + 0.8412x8 + 0.0002x100, which are opti-
mized based on SNR 6 dB, 4 dB and 2 dB, respectively. For
NB = 300, Q = 2000, IV = 0.975, 20 pEXIT iterations and
{γ1 , γ2 , · · · } = {6, 5.5, 5, 4.5, · · · } in decibel.
The efficiencies (average throughput/channel capacity, as
defined in [8]) of the proposed PR codes when q = 20 and the
conventional randomly connected Raptor codes in IR-HARQ
1478
Fig. 2. Efficiencies (throughput/capacity) of conventionally optimized Raptor
code, PR code, IPR code and IR-HARQ scheme with RC-LDPC. The informa-
tion block size is k = 1900 for all codes.
systems are shown in Fig. 2. In both codes the maximum
iteration of LT code is 20 and the maximum iteration of LDPC
code is 60. When the decoding fails, the receiver attempts to
decode again after collecting 60 more LT code bits. We see that
there exists a check-regular PR code which has slightly better
throughput performance than the conventional Raptor code that
is optimized for each given SNR.
V. C ONSTRUCTION OF I RREGULAR PR C ODES
We have seen that the PR code with a fixed output degree
is good only for a restricted SNR range. It is clear that if we
relieve the restriction on the random b̃ vectors for PR codes,
better throughput efficiency may be obtained. For an irregular
PR (IPR) code, each column in B has a degree from the multiple
values in a set D.
To search for good IPR codes with the irregular check-node
degrees, simply modifying Step 2 of the regular PR algorithm
by replacing Q candidates for b by Q|D| candidates is not
enough. To achieve a small pi , we may consider an algorithm
∗
which uses B̃ = [b1 , · · · , bpi −1 , b̃pi , b̃pi +1 , · · · , b̃ ] with
(Q|D|)−pi+1 candidates for b̃pi , b̃pi +1 , · · · , b̃ in selecting the
∗ are sent. The repeated bits are combined using maximal ratio
best ĪC (B̃ , γi ) that achieve IV under SNR γi with smallest .
However, the search load is too much. Instead, we use a less-
d 60 iterations. Clearly, these RC-LDPC codes can not match the
greedy algorithm in which, for each d ∈ D, there are Q b̃
d d
vectors which are used to select the best ĪC (B̃ , γi ), where B̃ =
d d
[b1 , · · · , bpi −1 , bdpi , · · · , bd−1 , b̃ ], and bdpi , · · · , bd−1 , b̃ all
have weight d. The search space has ( − pi + 1)Q|D| candi-
dates. The algorithm is as follows.
Irregular Protograph Raptor (IPR) Algorithm:
Step 1 Choose KB , NB , IV and an SNR set {γ1 , γ2 , · · · }, where
γi > γi+1 for all i. Let D be the set of possible degrees.
Initialize i = 1,  = 1 and pi = 1.
d
Step 2 For a degree d ∈ D, randomly generate Q b̃ vectors
d HV0
and obtain the associated B̃ matrices. For each can-
didate, use pEXIT to evaluate the average decoded MI
d d
ĪC (B̃ , γi ). Select bd = arg max ĪC (B̃ , γi ).
d
b̃
Step 3 Repeat Step 2 by (|D| − 1) times to search all available
degrees. An associated matrix Bd = [b1 , · · · , bpi −1 ,
bdpi , · · · , bd ] is obtained for each d ∈ D.
IEEE COMMUNICATIONS LETTERS, VOL. 19, NO. 9, SEPTEMBER 2015
Fig. 3. Efficiencies (throughput/capacity). Iteration numbers: 20 and 100 for
the IPR code and the PN-PBRL code; 20, 50, and 100 for the ANR code [8].
Step 4 If ĪC (Bd , γi ) ≥ IV for one or more d values, select
d as the d which has the largest ĪC (Bd , γi ), and if
there is still a tie regarding ĪC (Bd , γi ), select d as the

smallest d. Set pi+1 =  + 1, set bj equal to bdj for
j = pi , · · · , , and set i = i + 1 so as to switch the SNR
from γi to γi+1 . Otherwise, the SNR value remains the
same. If  < NB , increase  by 1 and go to Step 2 to
determine the next column. Otherwise, B = BNB .
Fig. 2 shows the efficiency performance of the IPR code,
which uses the same settings as the PR codes and the possible
degrees are D = {7, 15, 31}. It shows that the IPR code extend
the capacity-approaching region of PR codes as expected. For
comparison, Fig. 2 also shows the performance of IR-HARQ
scheme using rate-compatible (RC) LDPC codes. We use a
RC-LDPC code scheme that has a larger applicable rate range
based on the puncturing method presented in [12]. The mother
codes in consideration are rate 0.5 and 0.8 regular PEG LDPC
codes with k = 1900. A length 2000 punctured codeword is
firstly transmitted, followed by 60 punctured bits every retrans-
mission. If the entire LDPC codeword has been transmitted,
it repeats the LDPC coded bit until a maximum of 8000 bits
combining at the receiver. The LDPC codes are decoded with
IPR code in the efficiency performance.
We are also interested in the performance when lifting the
IPR code to a longer code. Fig. 3 illustrates the efficiencies of
the IPR code when q = 100 (k = 9500) comparing to the 6-step
adaptive non-systematic Raptor (ANR) code in [8] with the
same size. Under the same iterations, the proposed IPR code
outperforms the ANR code in the presented SNR range, espe-
cially in high SNR value.
In [11], a punctured-node protograph-based Raptor-like (PN-
PBRL) code is constructed by using a base parity check matrix
0
HB, = (4)
HLT, I
where HV0 and HB, are the base parity check matrices of
the LDPC code V0 and V respectively, HLT, represents the
connections between the  incremented pCNs and the pVNs in
V0 . Density evolution is used to find the best HLT, which yields
the lowest decodable SNR. In this way, a capacity approaching
KUO et al.: A CONSTRUCTION OF PHYSICAL-LAYER SYSTEMATIC RAPTOR CODES BASED ON PROTOGRAPHS
Fig. 4. The average input degree (edge/input bit) of proposed IPR code (LT
part), the adaptive nonsystematic Raptor code (LT part) in [8] and the PN-PBRL
code with R0 = 6/7 in IR-HARQ scheme.
RC-LDPC code with R0 = 6/7 or 8/10 have been constructed.
Fig. 3 shows the efficiency performance of a IR-HARQ scheme
using PN-PBRL code with R0 = 6/7 and k = 9504 under 20
and 100 iterations. The PN-PBRL code with large iteration
numbers can be more efficient if the SNR matches its rate range.
For a hardware-friendly application, the presented IPR code is
constructed with 20 pEXIT iterations and thus its connections
are selected to perform well under 20 iterations. Hence, accord-
ing to the efficiency performances, the IPR code is similar or
superior to the PN-PBRL code under 20 iterations for a wide
SNR range and is inferior to the PN-PBRL code under 100 (or
more) iterations at some SNR range. The comparison of BER
performances for the IPR code and the PN-PBRL code has
similar trend. Due to space limitation, the BER performances
are not provided here.
A larger search space in the code generation can increase the
probability of finding a code with better BER performance. For
the ANR code in [8], the search space for output degree dis-
tribution is {ωd : d ∈ D = {1, 2, 3, · · · , 9, 10, 15, 20, 25, · · · ,
75, 80}}. For the PN-PBRL code with R0 = 6/7 in [11], the
search space for each row in HLT, is the set of all the rows with
weight d, where d ∈ D, and D ⊇ {3, 4, 5, 6}. For the PR code,
the search space for each column in B̃ is a set of size Q =
2000 which contains columns of a given weight d. For the IPR
code, the size of search space is further multiplied by |D|, where
D = {7, 15, 31}. For any of the ANR code, PN-PBRL code and
the IPR code, there is still room for generating a better code by
expanding the current search space. However, the IPR code has
more room for expanding the search space since in our current
search we use the least |D| and a less-greedy algorithm.
VI. D ECODING C OMPLEXITY
For the decoder, its computational complexity can be eval-
uated by the number of required iterations and the number
of edges which implies the complexity for each iteration. We
compare the average LT code input degrees of the proposed
IPR code and the ANR codes [8]. From Fig. 4, we see that
the edge counts for both codes are vaguely equal at low rate.
The superiority of the IPR code at high SNR comes from
its systematic design. In Fig. 3, the efficiency performance
obtained by the ANR through 50 iterations is still inferior to that
obtained by the IPR code under 20 iterations for SNR greater
1479
than 0 dB. For hardware implementation, a protograph based
code with circulant permutation can be agreeable to simple
routing for both encoder and decoder. Therefore, the IPR code
is more hardware-friendly with less decoding complexity than
the ANR code. The average input degree for the PN-PBRL
code is also shown in Fig. 4. The IPR code has slightly more
complexity than the PN-PBRL code. This result may come
from the condition that the IPR code is designed to achieve
good efficiency in the SNR regime that starts from a high value
and hence a significant portion of high output degrees is needed.
VII. C ONCLUSION
We introduce a protograph-based systematic Raptor code. The
design of the proposed code employs a modified pEXIT analysis
to construct a sequence of incrementally enlarged base generator
matrices for gradually decreasing SNR. Compared to the PN-
PBRL code with R0 = 6/7 in [11] which is constructed through
a sequence of incrementally enlarged base parity-check matrices
for gradually decreasing coding rates, the proposed IPR code has
the advantage in throughput efficiency at high SNR and suffers
some loss if the number of iterations is high. Compared to the
ANR code in [8] which is designed for an optimized output de-
gree distribution, the proposed IPR code has the advantages of
smaller edge count, smaller needed iterations and the hardware-
friendly structure inherited from the protograph design.
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