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Laurent Schmalen

Publications and source records attributed to Laurent Schmalen.

At least 109 records · Page 6Linked to original sources
arXiv2022

Low-complexity Near-optimum Symbol Detection Based on Neural Enhancement of Factor Graphs

We consider the application of the factor graph framework for symbol detection on linear inter-symbol interference channels. Based on the Ungerboeck observation model, a detection algorithm with appealing complexity properties can be derived. However, since the underlying factor graph contains cycles, the sum-product algorithm (SPA) yields a suboptimal algorithm. In this paper, we develop and evaluate efficient strategies to improve the performance of the factor graph-based symbol detection by means of neural enhancement. In particular, we consider neural belief propagation and generalizations of the factor nodes as an effective way to mitigate the effect of cycles within the factor graph. By applying a generic preprocessor to the channel output, we propose a simple technique to vary the underlying factor graph in every SPA iteration. Using this dynamic factor graph transition, we intend to preserve the extrinsic nature of the SPA messages which is otherwise impaired due to cycles. Simulation results show that the proposed methods can massively improve the detection performance, even approaching the maximum a posteriori performance for various transmission scenarios, while preserving a complexity which is linear in both the block length and the channel memory.

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arXiv2022

Error-and-erasure Decoding of Product and Staircase Codes with Simplified Extrinsic Message Passing

The decoding performance of product codes and staircase codes based on iterative bounded-distance decoding (iBDD) can be improved with the aid of a moderate amount of soft information, maintaining a low decoding complexity. One promising approach is error-and-erasure (EaE) decoding, whose performance can be reliably estimated with density evolution (DE). However, the extrinsic message passing (EMP) decoder required by the DE analysis entails a much higher complexity than the simple intrinsic message passing (IMP) decoder. In this paper, we simplify the EMP decoding algorithm for the EaE channel for two commonly-used EaE decoders by deriving the EMP decoding results from the IMP decoder output and some additional logical operations based on the algebraic structure of the component codes and the EaE decoding rule. Simulation results show that the number of BDD steps is reduced to being comparable with IMP. Furthermore, we propose a heuristic modification of the EMP decoder that reduces the complexity further. In numerical simulations, the decoding performance of the modified decoder yields up to 0.2 dB improvement compared to standard EMP decoding.

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arXiv2022

Error-and-Erasure Decoding of Product and Staircase Codes

High-rate product codes (PCs) and staircase codes (SCs) are ubiquitous codes in high-speed optical communication achieving near-capacity performance on the binary symmetric channel. Their success is mostly due to very efficient iterative decoding algorithms that require very little complexity. In this paper, we extend the density evolution (DE) analysis for PCs and SCs to a channel with ternary output and ternary message passing, where the third symbol marks an erasure. We investigate the performance of a standard error-and-erasure decoder and of its simplification using DE. The proposed analysis can be used to find component code configurations and quantizer levels for the channel output. We also show how the use of even-weight BCH subcodes as component codes can improve the decoding performance at high rates. The DE results are verified by Monte-Carlo simulations, which show that additional coding gains of up to 0.6 dB are possible by ternary decoding, at only a small additional increase in complexity compared to traditional binary message passing.

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arXiv2021

Deep Reinforcement Learning for Wireless Resource Allocation Using Buffer State Information

As the number of user equipments (UEs) with various data rate and latency requirements increases in wireless networks, the resource allocation problem for orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA) becomes challenging. In particular, varying requirements lead to a non-convex optimization problem when maximizing the systems data rate while preserving fairness between UEs. In this paper, we solve the non-convex optimization problem using deep reinforcement learning (DRL). We outline, train and evaluate a DRL agent, which performs the task of media access control scheduling for a downlink OFDMA scenario. To kickstart training of our agent, we introduce mimicking learning. For improvement of scheduling performance, full buffer state information at the base station (e.g. packet age, packet size) is taken into account. Techniques like input feature compression, packet shuffling and age capping further improve the performance of the agent. We train and evaluate our agents using Nokia's wireless suite and evaluate against different benchmark agents. We show that our agents clearly outperform the benchmark agents.

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arXiv2021

Low Rate Protograph-Based LDPC Codes for Continuous Variable Quantum Key Distribution

Error correction plays a major role in the reconciliation of continuous variable quantum key distribution (CV-QKD) and greatly affects the performance of the system. CV-QKD requires error correction codes of extremely low rates and high reconciliation efficiencies. There are only very few code designs available in this ultra low rate regime. In this paper, we introduce a method for designing protograph-based ultra low rate LDPC codes using differential evolution. By proposing type-based protographs, a new way of representing low rate protograph-based LDPC codes, we drastically reduce the complexity of the protograph optimization, which enables us to quickly design codes over a wide range of rates. We show that the codes resulting from our optimization outperform the codes from the literature both in regards to the threshold and in finite-length performance, validated by Monte-Carlo simulations, showing gains in the regime relevant for CV-QKD.

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arXiv2020

Pruning and Quantizing Neural Belief Propagation Decoders

We consider near maximum-likelihood (ML) decoding of short linear block codes. In particular, we propose a novel decoding approach based on neural belief propagation (NBP) decoding recently introduced by Nachmani et al. in which we allow a different parity-check matrix in each iteration of the algorithm. The key idea is to consider NBP decoding over an overcomplete parity-check matrix and use the weights of NBP as a measure of the importance of the check nodes (CNs) to decoding. The unimportant CNs are then pruned. In contrast to NBP, which performs decoding on a given fixed parity-check matrix, the proposed pruning-based neural belief propagation (PB-NBP) typically results in a different parity-check matrix in each iteration. For a given complexity in terms of CN evaluations, we show that PB-NBP yields significant performance improvements with respect to NBP. We apply the proposed decoder to the decoding of a Reed-Muller code, a short low-density parity-check (LDPC) code, and a polar code. PB-NBP outperforms NBP decoding over an overcomplete parity-check matrix by 0.27-0.31 dB while reducing the number of required CN evaluations by up to 97%. For the LDPC code, PB-NBP outperforms conventional belief propagation with the same number of CN evaluations by 0.52 dB. We further extend the pruning concept to offset min-sum decoding and introduce a pruning-based neural offset min-sum (PB-NOMS) decoder, for which we jointly optimize the offsets and the quantization of the messages and offsets. We demonstrate performance 0.5 dB from ML decoding with 5-bit quantization for the Reed-Muller code.

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arXiv2020

Learned Decimation for Neural Belief Propagation Decoders

We introduce a two-stage decimation process to improve the performance of neural belief propagation (NBP), recently introduced by Nachmani et al., for short low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes. In the first stage, we build a list by iterating between a conventional NBP decoder and guessing the least reliable bit. The second stage iterates between a conventional NBP decoder and learned decimation, where we use a neural network to decide the decimation value for each bit. For a (128,64) LDPC code, the proposed NBP with decimation outperforms NBP decoding by 0.75 dB and performs within 1 dB from maximum-likelihood decoding at a block error rate of $10^{-4}$.

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arXiv2020

Pruning Neural Belief Propagation Decoders

We consider near maximum-likelihood (ML) decoding of short linear block codes based on neural belief propagation (BP) decoding recently introduced by Nachmani et al.. While this method significantly outperforms conventional BP decoding, the underlying parity-check matrix may still limit the overall performance. In this paper, we introduce a method to tailor an overcomplete parity-check matrix to (neural) BP decoding using machine learning. We consider the weights in the Tanner graph as an indication of the importance of the connected check nodes (CNs) to decoding and use them to prune unimportant CNs. As the pruning is not tied over iterations, the final decoder uses a different parity-check matrix in each iteration. For Reed-Muller and short low-density parity-check codes, we achieve performance within 0.27 dB and 1.5 dB of the ML performance while reducing the complexity of the decoder.

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arXiv2020

Optical Fiber Communication Systems Based on End-to-End Deep Learning

We investigate end-to-end optimized optical transmission systems based on feedforward or bidirectional recurrent neural networks (BRNN) and deep learning. In particular, we report the first experimental demonstration of a BRNN auto-encoder, highlighting the performance improvement achieved with recurrent processing for communication over dispersive nonlinear channels.

eess.SP↗
arXiv2020

Experimental Investigation of Deep Learning for Digital Signal Processing in Short Reach Optical Fiber Communications

We investigate methods for experimental performance enhancement of auto-encoders based on a recurrent neural network (RNN) for communication over dispersive nonlinear channels. In particular, our focus is on the recently proposed sliding window bidirectional RNN (SBRNN) optical fiber autoencoder. We show that adjusting the processing window in the sequence estimation algorithm at the receiver improves the reach of simple systems trained on a channel model and applied "as is" to the transmission link. Moreover, the collected experimental data was used to optimize the receiver neural network parameters, allowing to transmit 42 Gb/s with bit-error rate (BER) below the 6.7% hard-decision forward error correction threshold at distances up to 70km as well as 84 Gb/s at 20 km. The investigation of digital signal processing (DSP) optimized on experimental data is extended to pulse amplitude modulation with receivers performing sliding window sequence estimation using a feed-forward or a recurrent neural network as well as classical nonlinear Volterra equalization. Our results show that, for fixed algorithm memory, the DSP based on deep learning achieves an improved BER performance, allowing to increase the reach of the system.

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arXiv2019

Deep Learning for Communication over Dispersive Nonlinear Channels: Performance and Comparison with Classical Digital Signal Processing

In this paper, we apply deep learning for communication over dispersive channels with power detection, as encountered in low-cost optical intensity modulation/direct detection (IM/DD) links. We consider an autoencoder based on the recently proposed sliding window bidirectional recurrent neural network (SBRNN) design to realize the transceiver for optical IM/DD communication. We show that its performance can be improved by introducing a weighted sequence estimation scheme at the receiver. Moreover, we perform bit-to-symbol mapping optimization to reduce the bit-error rate (BER) of the system. Furthermore, we carry out a detailed comparison with classical schemes based on pulse-amplitude modulation and maximum likelihood sequence detection (MLSD). Our investigation shows that for a reference 42\,Gb/s transmission, the SBRNN autoencoder achieves a BER performance comparable to MLSD, when both systems account for the same amount of memory. In contrast to MLSD, the SBRNN performance is achieved without incurring a computational complexity exponentially growing with the processed memory.

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