A receiver, such as a mobile station or base station, includes a sliding window-decoder. An antenna in the receiver is configured to receive a protograph-based spatially coupled low density parity check (SC-LDPC) code from a transmitter. The sliding window-decoder is configured to perform a SC-LDPC decoding operation on the SC-LDPC code using a sliding window. The SC-LDPC code includes a parity check matrix. The sliding window includes a subset of protograph sections on which decoding calculations are iteratively performed. The sliding window-decoder performs a stopping rule configured to cease the decoding calculations as a function of a syndrome of one or more check nodes (CNs) in the sliding window.