Inactivation Decoding of LT and Raptor Codes: Analysis and Code Design

In this paper, we analyze Luby transform (LT) and Raptor codes under inactivation decoding. A first-order analysis is introduced, which provides the expected number of inactivations for an LT code, as a function of the output distribution, the number of input symbols, and the decoding overhead. The analysis is then extended to the calculation of the distribution of the number of inactivations. In both cases, random inactivation is assumed. The developed analytical tools are then exploited to design LT and Raptor codes, enabling a tight control on the decoding complexity versus failure probability tradeoff. The accuracy of the approach is confirmed by numerical simulations.