Certain aspects of the present disclosure provide low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes having pairwise orthogonality of adjacent rows, and a new decoder that exploits the pairwise row orthogonality for flexible decoder scheduling without performance loss. An apparatus includes a receiver configured to receive a codeword in accordance with a radio technology across a wireless channel via one or more antenna elements situated proximal the receiver. The apparatus includes at least one processor coupled with a memory and comprising decoder circuitry configured to decode the codeword based on a LDPC code to produce a set of information bits. The LDPC code is stored in the memory and defined by a base matrix having columns in which all adjacent rows are orthogonal in a last portion of the rows.