Quantum-enhanced belief propagation for LDPC decoding

Abstract

Decoding low-density parity-check codes is critical in many current technologies, such as fifth-generation (5G) wireless networks and satellite communications. The belief propagation algorithm allows for fast decoding due to the low density of these codes. However, there is scope for improvement to this algorithm both in terms of its computational cost when decoding large codes and its error-correcting abilities. Here, we introduce the quantum-enhanced belief propagation (QEBP) algorithm, in which the Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA) acts as a pre-processing step to belief propagation. We perform exact simulations of syndrome decoding with QAOA, whose result guides the belief propagation algorithm, leading to faster convergence and a lower block error rate (BLER). In addition, through the repetition code, we study the possibility of having shared variational parameters between syndromes and, in this case, code lengths. We obtain a unique pair of variational parameters for level-1 QAOA by optimizing the probability of successful decoding through a transfer matrix method. Then, using these parameters, we compare the scaling of different QAOA post-processing techniques with code length.