Tighter decoding reliability bound for Gallager's error-correcting code

Statistical physics is employed to evaluate the performance of error-correcting codes in the case of finite message length for an ensemble of Gallager's error correcting codes. We follow Gallager's approach of upper-bounding the average decoding error rate, but invoke the replica method to reproduce the tightest general bound to date, and to improve on the most accurate zero-error noise level threshold reported in the literature. The relation between the methods used and those presented in the information theory literature are explored.