  This paper addresses the issue of design of low-rate sparse-graph codes with
linear minimum distance in the blocklength. First, we define a necessary
condition which needs to be satisfied when the linear minimum distance is to be
ensured. The condition is formulated in terms of degree-1 and degree-2 variable
nodes and of low-weight codewords of the underlying code, and it generalizies
results known for turbo codes [8] and LDPC codes. Then, we present a new
ensemble of low-rate codes, which itself is a subclass of TLDPC codes [4], [5],
and which is designed under this necessary condition. The asymptotic analysis
of the ensemble shows that its iterative threshold is situated close to the
Shannon limit. In addition to the linear minimum distance property, it has a
simple structure and enjoys a low decoding complexity and a fast convergence.
