EE 388 : Syllabus

A significant part of this course is devoted to: (i) Codes based on sparse graph constructions; (ii) Iterative decoding algorithms. For these topics a useful reference is the text book by Tom Richardson and Rudi Urbanke (pointers in parenthesis) For other topics (eg spatial coupling and polar codes) we will use handouts and original papers.

Here is a rough syllabus (changes are possible, and suggestions/feedback are welcome).

April 3, 5

Basic terminology and scope of coding theory. Regular sparse graph ensembles. Message passing decoding for the Binary Erasure Channel. Analysis through density evolution. (Chapter 1, Chater 3)

April 10, 12

Irregular ensembles. Achieving capacity. Rateless codes. (Chapter 3)

April 17, 19

LDPCs for General Binary Memoryless Symmetric (BMS) channels. Message passing decoders. Belief propagation. Density evolution. Thresholds. (Chapter 4)

April 24, 26

More on LDPCs for general BMS channels. Achieving capacity via spatial coupling. (Chapter 4)

May 1, 3

Reed-Muller codes and Polar codes for the erasure channel.

May 8, 10

Polar codes on general BMS channels.

May 15, 17

Coding for distributed storage

May 22, 24, 29

Coding for computing.

May 31, June 5

Project presentations.

The final project was assigned on by the end of April