LT Codes for Reliable Network-on-Chip Communications

The concept of Network-on-Chip (NoC) is becoming a main trend in the area of System-on-Chip (SoC) design. In NoC communications, data may have errors caused by noise or technology. Forward-Error-Correction (FEC) algorithms can be used to improve the systems’ reliability by detecting and correcting errors on the receivers. Many FEC algorithms were proposed and investigated during the past few decades, but the realization of these FEC algorithms in hardware is still an exciting research area. Hardware-based implementations can be several orders of magnitudes faster than software-based methods so it is interesting to see what kind of FEC scheme can be implemented on hardware environment and how well it works.