Design of Efficient ORBGRAND Decoders with Parity-Check Constraint

LEI Sheng; LIANG Zhanhua; TIAN Jing; ZHOU Yangcan

doi:10.11999/JEIT250501

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LEI Sheng, LIANG Zhanhua, TIAN Jing, ZHOU Yangcan. Design of Efficient ORBGRAND Decoders with Parity-Check Constraint[J]. Journal of Electronics & Information Technology. doi: 10.11999/JEIT250501

Citation:

LEI Sheng, LIANG Zhanhua, TIAN Jing, ZHOU Yangcan. Design of Efficient ORBGRAND Decoders with Parity-Check Constraint[J]. Journal of Electronics & Information Technology. doi: 10.11999/JEIT250501

LEI Sheng, LIANG Zhanhua, TIAN Jing, ZHOU Yangcan. Design of Efficient ORBGRAND Decoders with Parity-Check Constraint[J]. Journal of Electronics & Information Technology. doi: 10.11999/JEIT250501

Citation:

LEI Sheng, LIANG Zhanhua, TIAN Jing, ZHOU Yangcan. Design of Efficient ORBGRAND Decoders with Parity-Check Constraint[J]. Journal of Electronics & Information Technology. doi: 10.11999/JEIT250501

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Design of Efficient ORBGRAND Decoders with Parity-Check Constraint

doi: 10.11999/JEIT250501 cstr: 32379.14.JEIT250501

1.
NanJing University, School of Electronic Science and Engineering, Nanjing 210023, China
2.
NanJing University, School of Integrated Circuits, Suzhou 215163, China
3.
Sun Yat-sen University, School of Integrated Circuits, Shenzhen 518107, China

Funds: The National Cryptography Fund of China (2025NSF02002), The Key Project of Jiangsu Basic Research Program (BK20243338), The Youth Talent Support Project of China Association for Science and Technology (2023QNRC001)

Received Date: 2025-06-03
Rev Recd Date: 2025-09-14

Available Online: 2025-09-16

Abstract

Abstract

Objective Ordered Reliability Bits Guessing Random Additive Noise Decoding (ORBGRAND) is a universal channel decoding algorithm characterized by its simple principles, strong decoding performance, low average latency, and hardware-friendly implementation. Since its proposal, ORBGRAND has attracted considerable attention as a promising alternative to traditional decoding methods. By combining ordered reliability bits with a noise-guessing strategy, it achieves near Maximum-Likelihood Decoding (MLD) performance while avoiding prohibitive resource overhead. However, challenges remain: its worst-case latency and limited throughput restrict practical use in high-speed communication systems. To address these gaps, this work proposes improved ORBGRAND serial and unrolled hardware architectures that incorporate a special parity-check constraint. Methods This study proposes incorporating a specific parity-check constraint into serial and unrolled ORBGRAND architectures. In the serial architecture, the global parity-check bit is used to control the iteration of Hamming Weight (HW) and Logistic Weight (LW), enabling the decoder to skip the generation and verification of invalid error patterns. In the unrolled architecture, error patterns are separately pre-stored and queried according to the global parity-check bit. This design significantly enhances the hardware efficiency of ORBGRAND decoders. Results and Discussions The improved serial and unrolled ORBGRAND decoders with the global parity-check constraint are implemented and compared with their original counterparts. Simulation results for a tested code indicate that the parity-check constraint preserves the decoding performance of conventional ORBGRAND, while reducing the average number of error pattern queries by 50% in the low to medium Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) range. The architectures are synthesized using Synopsys Design Compiler with TSMC 28 nm technology. The serial ORBGRAND architecture achieves an operating frequency of 400 MHz, delivering a throughput of 33.1 Gbps at SNR = 8 dB. The implementation occupies 0.18 mm² of area, yielding an area efficiency of 183.9 Gbps/mm². Compared with the prior art, the serial design increases throughput by 80.9% and area efficiency by 48.1%. The unrolled architecture achieves a throughput of 110.6 Gbps and an area efficiency of 3.97 Gbps/mm², corresponding to improvements of 584% in throughput and 1223% in area efficiency relative to the prior art. Conclusions The ORBGRAND algorithm offers a promising approach for high-performance decoding in communication systems by combining high parallelism with near MLD performance. The specific parity-check constraint filters out invalid error patterns, significantly reducing the number of error pattern queries in serial and unrolled ORBGRAND architectures, without compromising performance. The serial and unrolled architectural implementations achieve notable gains in throughput and area efficiency compared with original designs. Integrating ORBGRAND with parity-check constraints thus represents a significant advancement, providing a more efficient solution for pratical communication applications. Future work will focus on further optimization of these architectures and their adaptation to diverse communication standards. In particular, the exploration of additional coding contraints may further extend the applicability of the approach.
- Channel coding,
- ORBGRAND,
- Serial architecture,
- Unrolled architecture,
- Parity-check constraint

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References(24)

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