Design of spatially-coupled rateless codes

We investigate the design and performance of spatially-coupled rateless codes. A modified encoding process is introduced for spatially-coupled Luby Transform (SCLT) codes which leads to an almost regular variable-node degree distribution at the encoding graph. The proposed SCLT codes outperform its counterparts significantly over binary erasure channels, particularly in the erasure floor region. To further improve the erasure floor performance, the approach of spatial coupling is then extended to Raptor codes by concatenating a high-rate pre-coder to the SCLT codes. It is shown that the spatial coupling improves the convergence threshold of Raptor codes. Different ensembles of spatially-coupled Raptor codes are constructed depending on whether pre-coders and/or LT codes are spatially-coupled. The performance of different ensembles of spatially-coupled Raptor codes is then evaluated and compared based on density evolution, leading to an improved spatially-coupled Raptor code in terms of convergence threshold and lower complexity.