While the wireless world is moving towards the 5G era, wireless Tb/s communications are expected to become a main technology trend within the next ten years and beyond. On another note, for several decades, improvement in silicon technology has provided higher frequency, lower cost per gate, higher integration density and lower power consumption. However, microelectronics has now reached a point where it can no longer keep pace with the increasing requirements of communication systems, alone. Therefore, the Tb/s data rate is a significant challenge for the design of transceivers and in particular for forward error correction, the most complex component in the baseband chain. Consequently, silicon implementations of advanced channel coding schemes require a cross-layer approach involving information theory, algorithm development, parallel hardware architectures and semiconductor technology. This paper deals with the implementation challenges for advanced channel coding techniques, such as turbo codes, low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes or polar codes, when Tb/s throughput is targeted. As an example, we demonstrate how the specific design of codes and decoding algorithms, as well as the development of parallel hardware architectures make it possible to achieve a throughput higher than 100 Gb/s with current semiconductor technology.

Dr. Catherine Douillard received the engineering degree in telecommunications from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications de Bretagne, France, in 1988, the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Western Brittany, France, in 1992, and the accreditation to supervise research from the University of Southern Brittany, France, in 2004.

She is currently a full Professor in the Electronics Department of IMT Atlantique where she is in charge of the Algorithm-Silicon Interaction research team of the Lab-STICC laboratory. Her main research interests are error correcting codes, iterative decoding, iterative detection, coded modulations and diversity techniques for multi-carrier, multi-antenna and multiple access transmission systems.

Between 2007 and 2012, she participated in DVB (Digital Video Broadcasting) Technical Modules for the definition of DVB-T2, DVB-NGH and DVB-RCS NG standards. She also served as the technical program committee (co-)chair of ISTC 2010 and ISTC 2018 (International Symposium on Topics in Coding), as the general chair of ISTC 2016 and she will serve as the general co-chair of ISTC 2020.

In 2009, she received the SEE/IEEE Glavieux Award for her contribution to standards and related industrial impact.

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