Below is my tribute to Rafael Nadal - a tennis player who has inspired millions of kids like me to strive for great things in life.

What comes to your mind when you hear the word happiness? It could be spending time at home with family, watching movies with friends, playing sports, doing something you are passionate about (of course I mean your job :)), being on vacation, performing art, baking, reading novels, or just strolling through nature. These are various examples that come to mind. But is there a common thread between all these sources of happiness? Yes, that is what I found at least. Below I share a brief account of my journey in discovering this.

Error correction is a phenomenon that occurs in many instances in daily life but often goes unnoticed. Live streaming, surfing through the internet, watching a movie using compact disks (CDs), or even storing data in memory, all of these require error-correcting codes for their functioning. The key idea in error correction is the addition of redundant bits to the original data to counter the erroneous bits caused by the noise. Major advancements in this area have come due to their usage in communication systems, where large amounts of data need to be sent at high speeds through noisy channels. As we move towards 5G and beyond, the data rates keep increasing, consequently reducing the number of bits available for error correction. Yet, the goal is to design error-correcting codes that can operate at these high data rates and also provide reliable communication. One such code designed to meet the 5G standard specifications is the Quasi-cyclic Low-density Parity-check (QC-LDPC) code.