Fountain codes

Fountain codes are forward-error correcting codes suitable for erasure channels. A binary erasure channel is a memoryless channel, in which the symbols are either transmitted correctly or they are erased. The advantage of fountain codes is that it requires few encoded symbols for decoding. The source symbols can be decoded using any set of encoded symbols. Since fountain codes are rateless, they can adapt to changing channel conditions. They are beneficial for broadcasting and multicasting applications where channels have different erasure probability. 
The project involves the implementation of two different fountain codes: LT code and Raptor code. 
The goal of the project is to measure the performance of the code based on how many encoded symbols are required for successful decoding. The encoders and decoders for the two codes are designed in Matlab. The number of encoded symbols required for decoding of the source symbols for different degree distributions are plotted.