Patent ID: 7346832

Claim:
A method of encoding information using a LDPC encoder, the method comprising: receiving a first codeword length information indicative of the length of codewords to be generated, said first codeword length being one of a plurality of supported codeword lengths, each of the plurality of supported codeword lengths being divisible by a value N×K, wherein N and K are both integers greater than one; supplying said codeword length information to a control input of said LDPC encoder; operating the LDPC encoder to receive data to be encoded; and operating the LDPC encoder to generate codewords from received data based on the indicated length of codewords to be generated, where operating the LDPC encoder to generate codewords includes repeating a set of instructions K times to produce a codeword of N×K×L bits, where L is a positive integer, and wherein said set of instructions is repeated a different number of times for different codeword lengths.