Theoretical Bounds for the Size of Elementary Trapping Sets by Graphic Methods

Abstract: Elementary trapping sets (ETSs) are the main culprits for the performance of LDPC codes in the error floor region. Due to the large quantity, complex structures, and computational difficulties of ETSs, how to eliminate dominant ETSs in designing LDPC codes becomes a pivotal issue to improve the error floor behavior. In practice, researchers commonly address this problem by avoiding some special graph structures to free specific ETSs in Tanner graph. In this paper, we deduce the accurate Tur\'an number of $\theta(1,2,2)$ and prove that all $(a,b)$-ETSs in Tanner graph with variable-regular degree $d_L(v)=\gamma$ must satisfy the bound $b\geq a\gamma-\frac{1}{2}a^2$, which improves the lower bound obtained by Amirzade when the girth is 6. For the case of girth 8, by limiting the relation between any two 8-cycles in the Tanner graph, we prove a similar inequality $b\geq a\gamma-\frac{a(\sqrt{8a-7}-1)}{2}$. The simulation results show that the designed codes have good performance with lower error floor over additive white Gaussian noise channels.