This paper considers the joint-decoding problem for finite-state channels (FSCs) and low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes. In the first part, the linear-programming (LP) decoder for binary linear codes is extended to joint-decoding of binary-input FSCs. In particular, we provide a rigorous definition of LP joint-decoding pseudo-codewords (JD-PCWs) that enables evaluation of the pairwise error probability between codewords and JD-PCWs in AWGN. This leads naturally to a provable upper bound on decoder failure probability. If the channel is a finite-state intersymbol interference channel, then the joint LP decoder also has the maximum-likelihood (ML) certificate property and all integer-valued solutions are codewords. In this case, the performance loss relative to ML decoding can be explained completely by fractional-valued JD-PCWs. After deriving these results, we discovered some elements were equivalent to earlier work by Flanagan on linearprogramming receivers.In the second part, we develop an efficient iterative solver for the joint LP decoder discussed in the first part. In particular, we extend the approach of iterative approximate LP decoding, proposed by Vontobel and Koetter and analyzed by Burshtein, to this problem. By taking advantage of the dual-domain structure of the joint-decoding LP, we obtain a convergent iterative algorithm for joint LP decoding whose structure is similar to BCJR-based turbo equalization (TE). The result is a joint iterative decoder whose per-iteration complexity is similar to that of TE but whose performance is similar to that of joint LP decoding. The main advantage of this decoder is that it appears to provide the predictability of joint LP decoding and superior performance with the computational complexity of TE. One expected application is coding for magnetic storage where the required block-error rate is extremely low and system performance is difficult to verify by simulation.
A new message-passing (MP) method is considered for the matrix completion problem associated with recommender systems. We attack the problem using a (generative) factor graph model that is related to a probabilistic low-rank matrix factorization. Based on the model, we propose a new algorithm, termed IMP, for the recovery of a data matrix from incomplete observations. The algorithm is based on a clustering followed by inference via MP (IMP). The algorithm is compared with a number of other matrix completion algorithms on real collaborative filtering (e.g., Netflix) data matrices. Our results show that, while many methods perform similarly with a large number of revealed entries, the IMP algorithm outperforms all others when the fraction of observed entries is small. This is helpful because it reduces the well-known cold-start problem associated with collaborative filtering (CF) systems in practice.
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