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Blind detection approach for LDPC, convolutional, and turbo codes in non-noisy
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Conference Paper · October 2014

DOI: 10.1109/CNS.2014.6997525

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 IEEE CNS 2014 Poster Session
Blind Detection Approach for LDPC, Convolutional,
and Turbo Codes in Non-noisy Environment
Ahmed Refaey∗ , Raheleh Niati∗ , Xianbin Wang† , and Jean Yves-Chouinard‡
∗ Mircom Technologies Ltd., Toronto, Canada
† Dept. of Elec. and Comp. Engineering, University of Western Ontario, London, Canada
‡ Dept. of Elec. and Comp. Engineering, Université Laval, Québec, Canada
Abstract—In a non-cooperative context such as military or
spectrum surveillance application, a passive adversary has to
solve the problem of estimating the transmitter parameters.
In addition, wireless systems cause signaling overhead since
their transmitter must inform the receiver about the chosen
bit allocation table or the Forward Error Correction (FEC)
scheme. In this work, a perception of a smart receiver able
to blindly estimate a specific transmission context based on an
intercepted stream is proposed. In particular, a new technique
addressing the blind recognition of low-density parity-check
(LDPC), convolutional, and turbo codes’ encoding parameters at
the receiver is introduced. The proposed blind detection for the
FEC code technique considers a new iterative method based on
Gauss-Jordan elimination through a pivoting algorithm devoted
to the blind estimation of these codes encoding parameters in a
non-noisy context.
I. I NTRODUCTION
A smart and independent receiver that can operate based on
less information from the transmitter will add more security to
the established wireless connection. Furthermore, the problem
of blind detection of a channel coding scheme is important
for reducing the signaling overhead. However, there are not
many researches addressing this problem. Nevertheless, search
algorithms has been introduced for the detection of binary
linear codes by Valembois in [1]. Likewise, Rice in [2] intro-
duced the first approach to identify a convolutional encoder.
However, this work was limited to rate 1/n convolutional
codes. Among all the available methods to blindly recover FEC
at the receiver side, only few researchers were concerned about
the blind identification for the FEC in a noisy environment. For
example, Dingel and Hagenauer in [3] considered the problem
of estimating the parameters of a convolutional encoder when
the encoded bits are received with errors.
In this work, a generalized detection method to identify
the LDPC, convolutional, and turbo code schemes parameters
is introduced. First, based on the Gauss-Jordan elimination
through pivoting algorithm, an extended approach to find
almost dependent columns of reconstructed matrix from the
intercepted sequences (assumed to be error free) to estimate
the LDPC and turbo encoders’ parameters is introduced. Af-
terwords, we propose an interative method to blindly identify
the intercepted sequences in a noisy environment.
978-1-4799-5890-0/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE 502
II. I DENTIFICATION OF LDPC CODE PARAMETERS
LDPC codes can be described either using matrices or
graphical representations. Herein, the proposed technique uti-
lize the matrix representation. Given the generator matrix G
that can be written as [P |I] , the encoder can be designed
using NOR gates. Each user bit sequence x = (x0 , x1 , ..., xm )
is encoded to a codeword y = (y0 , y1 , ..., yn ). Based on the
dimensions of H, there will be k parity-check constraints for
a length n codeword. However, if H is not full rank, implying
that some of the parity-check equations are linearly dependent,
the generator matrix can use only the independent parity-
check equations. In that case, there can be fewer parity-check
bits than the number of parity-check constraints. Without loss
of generality, this work considers this encoding approach.
However, although this is a possible encoding approach, the
encoding complexity is high considering that the density of
"l"s in the P matrix can be very high.
Principle of LDPC Codes Identification
Herein, the approach introduced in [4] is modified to esti-
mate the data block length as well as the code rate for LDPC
codes. The previous approach was based on showing that the
normalized rank of a blind constructed matrix contains the
codewords which decreases when the size of the intercepted
block length is a multiple of the interleaver period. In this
work, assuming that there is no interleaver, the block length
can be estimated instead of the interleaver size.
Modified approach description:
1) Noise-free channel.
2) Dividing the received stream into analysis blocks of
(nreceived ) variable size.
3) Building up a matrix (Hestimated ) containing the code-
words, where, its rows are of the same value as
(nreceived ), (see Figure 1).
4) α is defined as:
rank(Hestimated )
α= (1)
nreceived
Now assuming the intercepted data block is based on Figure
1, the left side of the figure shows the known encoded data
while the right side depicts the intercepted data at the receiver.
There are unknown parameters associated with the received
 IEEE CNS 2014 Poster Session

Estimation of frame length/ code rate, frame length 5 bits, Syncronized

intercepted data such as the sizes of large matrix and the sub-
1
matrices, and the code-rate. We divide the intercepted stream 0.8

Alpha
0.6
into analysis blocks nreceived with variable length (assumed a 0.4
Alpha (nintercepted)
Upper bound
reasonable range to cover the expected code length value, i.e. 0.2
0
Lower bound
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18
if we expect an LDPC code one should assume a large value nreceived
Estimation of frame length/ code rate, frame length 5 bits, Desyncronized

as the LDPC block length is assumed to have large values in 1

most wireless standards). 0.8

Alpha
0.6

Figure 3 shows the obtained values of α as a function of 0.4

0.2
Alpha (nintercepted)
Upper bound
Lower bound
nreceived . It is noteworthy that, the ratio α is equal to one 0
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18

if nreceived = nintercepted , whereas we make the hypothesis

nreceived

that the interception matrix behaves like a random binary Fig. 2. α versus nintercepted when the analysis blocks are synchronized
matrix. Then some bits of the linear combination may have and desynchronized (the upper bound is reached).
moved to the next line as shown in Figure 1 and so the
Estimation of frame length/ code for LDPC code, frame length 256 bits, Syncronized
XOR of the considered columns is not equal to zero anymore 1.2

1
(desynchronization case). It is shown that if the length of the 0.8

intercepted interleaved stream is sufficient, this close upper

Alpha
0.6

bound is often reached because there is enough diversity in the 0.4

Alpha (nintercepted)
0.2 Upper bound
data. However, the ratio α is less than one (the code rate value 0
Lower bound

in the case of synchronization) if nreceived = nintercepted

0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500
nreceived
Distribution of ones in the parity check matrix
0
or nreceived is a multiple of the interleaver period ni (i.e. 0.7

Number of rows
0.6
50

nreceived = bintercepted nintercepted , where bintercepted is an 100

0.5
0.4

integer) as the rank of Hestimated is minimal. 0 100 200

0.3
210 220 230 240 250 260 270 280 290 300

= =
Number of columns Magnify for the frame/ code rate point
Whereas kintercepted /nintercepted kc /nc
r(coderate), then the upper bound for the ratio Fig. 3. α versus nintercepted when the analysis blocks are synchronized
α = rank(Hestimated )/nreceived is as follows: (the upper bound is reached).
 
1
β ≤ min r + (−r + min (β, r) + min (1 − β, r)) , 1
bi codes derived by treating the latter as parallel concatenated
(2) convolutional codes. Consequently, we enable the detection of
1 1
where β = nda and 0 ≤ β ≤ ( bintercepted − nreceived ) where d convolutional and turbo codes by means of the same iterative
is an integer which represents the unknown desynchronization method (based on Gauss-Jordan elimination through pivoting
between interleaver blocks (in our case the coded block length) algorithm) used for LDPC codes.
and analysis blocks 0 ≤ d ≤ nintercepted − 1.
Furthermore, the synchronization and the desynchronization IV. C ONCLUSION
cases which are described in the two sub-matrices in 1 are In this work, we propose a method for detecting LDPC,
shown clearly by simulations in Figure 2 for a (5, 4)-linear convolutional, and turbo codes’ parameters based on Gauss-
code synchronized and desynchronized cases, respectively. Jordan elimination through pivoting algorithm. This method
Figure 3 shows a (255, 128)-LDPC code. involves the behavior of the normalized rank of the parity
check matrix H (which is constructed from the intercepted
6WUXFWXUHRIPDWUL[+HVWLPDWHG interleaved stream) to estimate the code rate, as well as
to perform a blind codeword synchronization. Although this
method is only suitable for LDPC codes of moderate length,
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it works very well with convolutional and turbo codes of
different code lengths too.
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R EFERENCES
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[1] A. Valembois, “ Detection and Recognition of a Binary Linear Code, ”

6\QFKURQL]HG Discrete Applied Mathematics, v 111, n 1-2, pp. 199-218, 2001.
[2] B. Rice,“Determining the Parameters of a Rate 1/n Convolutional
IUDPHV

Encoder Over gf (q),” in Proc. of the 3rd International Conference on

Finite Fields and Applications, Glasgow, 1995.
Fig. 1. The synchronization and the desynchronization cases which are [3] J. Dingel, and J. Hagenauer, “ Parameter Estimation of a Convolutional
described in the two sub-matrices. Encoder From Noisy Observations, ”IEEE International Symposium on
Information Theory, pp. 1776-1780, 2007.
[4] A. Yardi and S. Vijayakumaran,“ Detecting linear block codes in noise
III. C ONVOLUTIONAL AND T URBO C ODES using the GLRT, ” IEEE Inretnational Conference on Communications
I DENTIFICATION (ICC), pp. 4895-4899. IEEE, 2013.
[5] A. Refaey, S. Roy, and P. Fortier, “On the application of BP decoding to
In [5], we have introduced a general representation scheme convolutional and turbo codes,” Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems,
for the parity-check matrix H of convolutional and turbo and Computers, Nov. 2009.

503

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