Polar codes, discovered by Arıkan, are the first error-correcting codes with an explicit construction to provably achieve channel capacity, asymptotically. However, their error-correction performance at finite lengths tends to be lower than existing capacity-approaching schemes. Using the successive-cancellation algorithm, polar decoders can be designed for very long codes, with low hardware complexity, leveraging the regular structure of such codes. We present an architecture and an implementation of a scalable hardware decoder based on this algorithm. This design is shown to scale to code lengths of up to N = 2^20 on an Altera Stratix IV FPGA, limited almost exclusively by the amount of available SRAM.
This paper introduces algorithms for the successive-cancellation decoding and the successive-cancellation list decoding of binary polar source/channel codes. By using the symmetric parametrization of conditional probability, we reduce both space and time complexity compared to the original algorithm introduced by Tal and Vardy.
This paper investigates the error probability of several decoding methods for a source code with decoder side information, where the decoding methods are: 1) symbol-wise maximum a posteriori decoding, 2) successive-cancellation decoding, and 3) stochastic successive-cancellation decoding. The proof of the effectiveness of a decoding method is reduced to that for an arbitrary decoding method, where `effective' means that the error probability goes to zero as $n$ goes to infinity. Furthermore, we revisit the polar source code showing that stochastic successive-cancellation decoding, as well as s…
The extended Golay code is shown to be representable as a chained polar subcode. This enables its decoding with the successive cancellation algorithm and its stack generalization. The decoder can be further simplified by employing fast Hadamard transform. The complexity of the obtained algorithm is comparable with that of the Vardy algorithm.
Simulation results illustrating the performance and complexity of the sequential successive cancellation decoding algorithm are presented for the case of polar subcodes with Arikan and large kernels, as well as for extended BCH\ codes. Performance comparison with Arikan PAC and LDPC codes is provided. Furthermore, complete description of the decoding algorithm is presented.
We study faulty successive cancellation decoding of polar codes for the binary erasure channel. To this end, we introduce a simple erasure-based fault model and we show that, under this model, polarization does not happen, meaning that fully reliable communication is not possible at any rate. Moreover, we provide numerical results for the frame erasure rate and bit erasure rate and we study an unequal error protection scheme that can significantly improve the performance of the faulty successive cancellation decoder with negligible overhead.
As improved versions of successive cancellation (SC) decoding algorithm, successive cancellation list (SCL) decoding and successive cancellation stack (SCS) decoding are used to improve the finite-length performance of polar codes. Unified descriptions of SC, SCL and SCS decoding algorithms are given as path searching procedures on the code tree of polar codes. Combining the ideas of SCL and SCS, a new decoding algorithm named successive cancellation hybrid (SCH) is proposed, which can achieve a better trade-off between computational complexity and space complexity. Further, to reduce the comp…
This paper presents an efficient hardware design approach for list successive cancellation (LSC) decoding of polar codes. By applying path-overlapping scheme, the l instances of (l > 1) successive cancellation (SC) decoder for LSC with list size l can be cut down to only one. This results in a dramatic reduction of the hardware complexity without any decoding performance loss. We also develop novel approaches to reduce the latencyassociated with the pipeline scheme. Simulation results show that with proposed design approach the hardware efficiency is increased significantly over the recently p…
In this paper, we study slotted Spread Spectrum Aloha with Successive Interference Cancellation at the receiver over a Gaussian channel. We consider a decentralized power control setting in which each user chooses its transmit power independently at random according to a power distribution with continuous support. In this setting, we derive an analytical expression for the expected interference power experienced by a user. This allows us to derive analytically the power distribution that, during the Successive Interference Cancellation process leads to a constant signal to noise plus interfere…
We show that successive cancellation list decoding can be formulated exclusively using log-likelihood ratios. In addition to numerical stability, the log-likelihood ratio based formulation has useful properties which simplify the sorting step involved in successive cancellation list decoding. We propose a hardware architecture of the successive cancellation list decoder in the log-likelihood ratio domain which, compared to a log-likelihood domain implementation, requires less irregular and smaller memories. This simplification together with the gains in the metric sorter, lead to $56\%$ to $13…
In this work, we propose an activity-aware low-complexity multiple feedback successive interference cancellation (AA-MF-SIC) strategy for massive machine-type communications. The computational complexity of the proposed AA-MF-SIC is as low as the conventional SIC algorithm with very low additional complexity added. The simulation results show that the algorithm significantly outperforms the conventional SIC schemes and other proposals.
In this paper, we derive the exact weight distributions that emerge during each stage of successive cancellation decoding of polar codes. Though we do not compute the distance spectrum of polar codes, the results allow us to get an estimate of the decoding error probability and to show a link between the first nonzero components of the weight distribution and the partial order between the synthetic channels. Also, we establish the minimal distance between two cosets associated with two paths that differ in two positions. This can be regarded as a first step toward analyzing the weight distribu…
The necessity of accurate channel estimation for Successive and Parallel Interference Cancellation is well known. Iterative channel estimation and channel decoding (for instance by means of the Expectation-Maximization algorithm) is particularly important for these multiuser detection schemes in the presence of time varying channels, where a high density of pilots is necessary to track the channel. This paper designs a method to analytically derive a weighting factor $α$, necessary to improve the efficiency of interference cancellation in the presence of poor channel estimates. Moreover, this …
We propose a low complexity list successive cancellation (LCLSC) decoding algorithm to reduce complexity of traditional list successive cancellation (LSC) decoding of polar codes while trying to maintain the LSC decoding performance at the same time. By defining two thresholds, namely "likelihood ratio (LR) threshold" and "Bhattacharyya parameter threshold", we classify the reliability of each received information bit and the quality of each bit channel. Based on this classification, we implement successive cancellation (SC) decoding instead of LSC decoding when the information bits from "bad"…
Polar codes under successive cancellation decoding proposed by Arıkan provably achieve the symmetric capacity of any given binary-input discrete memoryless channel. The successive cancellation list decoder for polar codes was described by Tal and Vardy as a generalization of the successive cancellation decoder of Arıkan. The performance of the successive cancellation list decoder is encouraging in practice. In this paper, we formalize the successive cancellation list decoder in our notation and prove that polar codes under successive cancellation list decoding achieve the symmetric capacity of…
This work analyzes the latency of the simplified successive cancellation (SSC) decoding scheme for polar codes proposed by Alamdar-Yazdi and Kschischang. It is shown that, unlike conventional successive cancellation decoding, where latency is linear in the block length, the latency of SSC decoding is sublinear. More specifically, the latency of SSC decoding is $O(N^{1-1/μ})$, where $N$ is the block length and $μ$ is the scaling exponent of the channel, which captures the speed of convergence of the rate to capacity. Numerical results demonstrate the tightness of the bound and show that most of…
A novel permuted fast successive-cancellation list decoding algorithm with fast Hadamard transform (FHT-FSCL) is presented. The proposed decoder initializes $L$ $(L\ge1)$ active decoding paths with $L$ random codeword permutations sampled from the full symmetry group of the codes. The path extension in the permutation domain is carried out until the first constituent RM code of order $1$ is visited. Conventional path extension of the successive-cancellation list decoder is then utilized in the information bit domain. The simulation results show that for a RM code of length $512$ with $46$ info…
Successive interference cancellation (SIC) is based on the idea that some interfering signals may be strong enough to decode in order to be removed from the aggregate received signal and thus boost performance. In this letter, we study the SIC technique from a simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) standpoint. We consider a bipolar ad hoc network and evaluate the impact of SIC on the SWIPT performance for the power splitting technique. Theoretical and numerical results show that our proposed approach can achieve significant energy gains and under certain scenarios the ave…
In this paper, we outline the approach for the derivation of the length of the collision resolution interval for d-ary tree algorithms (TA) with gated access and successive interference cancellation (SIC), conditioned on the number of the contending users. This is the basic performance parameter for TA with gated access. We identify the deficiencies of the analysis performed in the seminal paper on TA with SIC by Yu and Giannakis, showing that their analysis is correct only for binary splitting, i.e. for d=2. We also provide some insightful results on the stable throughput that can be achieved…
BMERA or convolutional polar codes are an extension of polar codes with a provably better error exponent than polar codes. A successive cancellation (SC) decoding algorithm for BMERA codes similar to SC polar decoders is introduced. A pseudocode description of the SC decoder that can be extended to SC list (SCL) decoding is provided. Simulation results with and without outer CRC codes under SC and SCL decoding are presented for QAM modulation over the AWGN channel to compare the performance of polar and BMERA codes. BMERA codes outperform polar codes by more than 0.5 dB under SCL decoding with…
We introduce successive cancellation (SC) decoding of product codes (PCs) with single parity-check (SPC) component codes. Recursive formulas are derived, which resemble the SC decoding algorithm of polar codes. We analyze the error probability of SPC-PCs over the binary erasure channel under SC decoding. A bridge with the analysis of PCs introduced by Elias in 1954 is also established. Furthermore, bounds on the block error probability under SC decoding are provided, and compared to the bounds under the original decoding algorithm proposed by Elias. It is shown that SC decoding of SPC-PCs achi…
In this letter, we propose an adaptive SC (Successive Cancellation)-List decoder for polar codes with CRC. This adaptive SC-List decoder iteratively increases the list size until the decoder outputs contain at least one survival path which can pass CRC. Simulation shows that the adaptive SC-List decoder provides significant complexity reduction. We also demonstrate that polar code (2048, 1024) with 24-bit CRC decoded by our proposed adaptive SC-List decoder with very large list size can achieve a frame error rate FER=0.001 at Eb/No=1.1dB, which is about 0.2dB from the information theoretic lim…
Successive cancellation list (SCL) decoding algorithm is a powerful method that can help polar codes achieve excellent error-correcting performance. However, the current SCL algorithm and decoders are based on likelihood or log-likelihood forms, which render high hardware complexity. In this paper, we propose a log-likelihood-ratio (LLR)-based SCL (LLR-SCL) decoding algorithm, which only needs half the computation and storage complexity than the conventional one. Then, based on the proposed algorithm, we develop low-complexity VLSI architectures for LLR-SCL decoders. Analysis results show that…
Polar codes are one of the most recent advancements in coding theory and they have attracted significant interest. While they are provably capacity achieving over various channels, they have seen limited practical applications. Unfortunately, the successive nature of successive cancellation based decoders hinders fine-grained adaptation of the decoding complexity to design constraints and operating conditions. In this paper, we propose a systematic method for enabling complexity-performance trade-offs by constructing polar codes based on an optimization problem which minimizes the complexity u…
Polar codes have attracted a lot of attention during past few years and have been adopted as a coding scheme for 5G standard. Successive-cancellation list (SCL) decoder provides high level error-correction performance for polar codes, but the implementation complexity grows rapidly with the increase of the list size. Since the computation cost of sorting, many works focus on reducing the sorting complexity for SCL decoder. In this paper, we propose a method for SCL which directly reduce the number of input elements of sorting network without performance loss. Compared with SCL decoder, the pro…
Under successive cancellation (SC) decoding, polar codes are inferior to other codes of similar blocklength in terms of frame error rate. While more sophisticated decoding algorithms such as list- or stack-decoding partially mitigate this performance loss, they suffer from an increase in complexity. In this paper, we describe a new flavor of the SC decoder, called the SC flip decoder. Our algorithm preserves the low memory requirements of the basic SC decoder and adjusts the required decoding effort to the signal quality. In the waterfall region, its average computational complexity is almost …
In this paper, we present a successive-cancellation-soft-output (SCSO) detector for an uplink multiuser multiple-input-multiple-output (MU-MIMO) system with one-bit analog-to-digital converters (ADCs). The proposed detector produces soft outputs (e.g., log-likelihood ratios (LLRs)) from one-bit quantized observations in a successive way: each user k's message is sequentially decoded from a channel decoder $k$ for $k=1,...,K$ in that order, and the previously decoded messages are exploited to improve the reliabilities of LLRs. Furthermore, we develop an efficient greedy algorithm to optimize a …
A product code with single parity-check component codes can be described via the tools of a multi-kernel polar code, where the rows of the generator matrix are chosen according to the constraints imposed by the product code construction. Following this observation, successive cancellation decoding of such codes is introduced. In particular, the error probability of single parity-check product codes over binary memoryless symmetric channels under successive cancellation decoding is characterized. A bridge with the analysis of product codes introduced by Elias is also established for the binary …
Polar codes is promising because they can provably achieve the channel capacity while having an explicit construction method. Lots of work have been done for the bit-based decoding algorithm for polar codes. In this paper, generalized symbol-based successive cancellation (SC) and SC list decoding algorithms are discussed. A symbol-based recursive channel combination relationship is proposed to calculate the symbol-based channel transition probability. This proposed method needs less additions than the maximum-likelihood decoder used by the existing symbol-based polar decoding algorithm. In add…
Polar codes provably achieve the capacity of a wide array of channels under successive decoding. This assumes infinite precision arithmetic. Given the successive nature of the decoding algorithm, one might worry about the sensitivity of the performance to the precision of the computation. We show that even very coarsely quantized decoding algorithms lead to excellent performance. More concretely, we show that under successive decoding with an alphabet of cardinality only three, the decoder still has a threshold and this threshold is a sizable fraction of capacity. More generally, we show that …
This letter proposes successive cancellation list (SCL) decoding of product codes with Reed--Muller (RM) component codes. SCL decoding relies on a product code description based on the $2\times 2$ Hadamard kernel, which enables interpreting the code as an RM subcode. The focus is on a class of product codes considered in wireless communication systems, based on single parity-check and extended Hamming component codes. For short product codes, it is shown that SCL decoding with a moderate list size performs as well as (and, sometimes, outperforms) belief propagation (BP) decoding. Furthermore, …
Successive interference cancellation (SIC) is a physical layer technique that enables the decoders to decode multiple simultaneously transmitted signals. The complicated model of SIC requires careful design of the MAC protocol and accurate adjustment of transmission parameters. We propose a new MAC protocol, known as CSMA-SIC, that employs the multi-packet reception capability of SIC. The proposed protocol adjusts the transmission probabilities to achieve throughput optimality.
Dynamic successive cancellation flip (DSCF) decoding of polar codes is a powerful algorithm that can achieve the error correction performance of successive cancellation list (SCL) decoding, with a complexity that is close to that of successive cancellation (SC) decoding at practical signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regimes. However, DSCF decoding requires costly transcendental computations which adversely affect its implementation complexity. In this paper, we first show that a direct application of common approximation schemes on the conventional DSCF decoding results in significant error-correcti…
In this paper, faulty successive cancellation decoding of polar codes for the binary erasure channel is studied. To this end, a simple erasure-based fault model is introduced to represent errors in the decoder and it is shown that, under this model, polarization does not happen, meaning that fully reliable communication is not possible at any rate. Furthermore, a lower bound on the frame error rate of polar codes under faulty SC decoding is provided, which is then used, along with a well-known upper bound, in order to choose a blocklength that minimizes the erasure probability under faulty dec…
A deep-learning-aided successive-cancellation list (DL-SCL) decoding algorithm for polar codes is introduced with deep-learning-aided successive-cancellation (DL-SC) decoding being a specific case of it. The DL-SCL decoder works by allowing additional rounds of SCL decoding when the first SCL decoding attempt fails, using a novel bit-flipping metric. The proposed bit-flipping metric exploits the inherent relations between the information bits in polar codes that are represented by a correlation matrix. The correlation matrix is then optimized using emerging deep-learning techniques. Performanc…
Multi-kernel polar codes have recently been proposed to construct polar codes of lengths different from powers of two. Decoder implementations for multi-kernel polar codes need to account for this feature, that becomes critical in memory management. We propose an efficient, generalized memory management framework for implementation of successivecancellation decoding of multi-kernel polar codes. It can be used on many types of hardware architectures and different flavors of SC decoding algorithms. We illustrate the proposed solution for small kernel sizes, and give complexity estimates for vari…
In this paper, a low-complexity multiple feedback successive interference cancellation (MF-SIC) strategy is proposed for the uplink of multiuser multiple-input multiple-output (MU-MIMO) systems. In the proposed MF-SIC {algorithm with shadow area constraints (SAC)}, an enhanced interference cancellation is achieved by introducing {constellation points as the candidates} to combat the error propagation in decision feedback loops. We also combine the MF-SIC with multi-branch (MB) processing, which achieves a higher detection diversity order. For coded systems, a low-complexity soft-input soft-out…
The recently-discovered polar codes are widely seen as a major breakthrough in coding theory. These codes achieve the capacity of many important channels under successive cancellation decoding. Motivated by the rapid progress in the theory of polar codes, we propose a family of architectures for efficient hardware implementation of successive cancellation decoders. We show that such decoders can be implemented with O(n) processing elements and O(n) memory elements, while providing constant throughput. We also propose a technique for overlapping the decoding of several consecutive codewords, th…
The decoding performance of polar codes strongly depends on the decoding algorithm used, while also the decoder throughput and its latency mainly depend on the decoding algorithm. In this work, we implement the powerful successive cancellation list (SCL) decoder on a GPU and identify the bottlenecks of this algorithm with respect to parallel computing and its difficulties. The inherent serial decoding property of the SCL algorithm naturally limits the achievable speed-up gains on GPUs when compared to CPU implementations. In order to increase the decoding throughput, we use a hybrid decoding s…
Successive cancellation (SC) is the first and widely known decoder of polar codes, which has received a lot of attentions recently. However, its decoding schedule generating algorithms are still primitive, which are not only complex but also offline. This paper proposes a simple and online algorithm to generate the decoding schedule of SC decoder. Firstly, the dependencies among likelihood ratios (LR) are explored, which lead to the discovery of a sharing factor. Secondly, based on the online calculation of the sharing factor, the proposed algorithm is presented, which is neither based on the …
A new adaptive receiver design for the Multicarrier (MC) DS-CDMA is proposed employing successive interference cancellation (SIC) architecture. One of the main problems limiting the performance of SIC in MC DS-CDMA is the imperfect estimation of multiple access interference (MAI), and hence, the limited frequency diversity gain achieved in multipath fading channels. In this paper, we design a blind adaptive SIC with new multiple access interference suppression capability implemented within despreading process to improve both detection and cancellation processes. Furthermore, dynamic scaling fa…
Conventional power-domain non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) relies on precise power control, which requires real-time channel state information at transmitters. This requirement severely limits its application to future wireless communication systems. To address this problem, we consider NOMA without power allocation, where we exploit the random channel fading and opportunistically perform successive interference cancellation (SIC) detection. To mitigate the multi-user interference, we propose a random NOMA where users randomly transmit their data packets with a certain probability. Then a…
Polar codes have emerged as the most favorable channel codes for their unique capacity-achieving property. To date, numerous works have been reported for efficient design of polar codes decoder. However, these prior efforts focused on design of polar decoders via deterministic computation, while the behavior of stochastic polar decoder, which can have potential advantages such as low complexity and strong error-resilience, has not been studied in existing literatures. This paper, for the first time, investigates polar decoding using stochastic logic. Specifically, the commonly-used successive …
Arıkan's polar coding, is by now a well studied technique that allows achieving the symmetric capacity of binary input memoryless channels with low complexity encoding and decoding, provided that the polar decoding architecture is used and the decoding metric is matched to the true channel. In this paper, we analyze communication rates that are achievable when the polar coding/decoding architecture is used with the decoder using an incorrect model of the channel. We define the `polar mismatched capacity' as an analogue of the classical mismatched capacity, give an expression for it, and derive…
Polar codes are linear block codes that can achieve channel capacity at infinite code length. Successive cancellation list (SCL) decoding relies on a set of parallel decoders; it yields good error-correction performance at finite code length, at the cost of increased implementation complexity and power consumption. Current efforts in literature focus on design-time decoder complexity reduction, while lacking practical run-time power reduction methods. In this work, input-distribution-aware SCL (IDA-SCL) decoding is proposed, that allows to determine the parallelism to adopt by performing simpl…
Polar codes are capacity achieving error correcting codes that can be decoded through the successive-cancellation algorithm. To improve its error-correction performance, a list-based version called successive-cancellation list (SCL) has been proposed in the past, that however substantially increases the number of time-steps in the decoding process. The simplified SCL (SSCL) decoding algorithm exploits constituent codes within the polar code structure to greatly reduce the required number of time-steps without introducing any error-correction performance loss. In this paper, we propose a faster…
This paper presents a hardware architecture of fast simplified successive cancellation (fast-SSC) algorithm for polar codes, which significantly reduces the decoding latency and dramatically increases the throughput. Algorithmically, fast-SSC algorithm suffers from the fact that its decoder scheduling and the consequent architecture depends on the code rate; this is a challenge for rate-compatible system. However, by exploiting the homogeneousness between the decoding processes of fast constituent polar codes and regular polar codes, the presented design is compatible with any rate. The schedu…
Polar codes are a class of capacity-achieving codes for the binary-input discrete memoryless channels (B-DMCs). However, when applied in channels with intersymbol interference (ISI), the codes may perform poorly with BCJR equalization and conventional decoding methods. To deal with the ISI problem, in this paper a new joint successive cancellation (SC) decoding algorithm is proposed for polar codes in ISI channels, which combines the equalization and conventional decoding. The initialization information of the decoding method is the likelihood functions of ISI codeword symbols rather than the …
We focus on the metric sorter unit of successive cancellation list decoders for polar codes, which lies on the critical path in all current hardware implementations of the decoder. We review existing metric sorter architectures and we propose two new architectures that exploit the structure of the path metrics in a log-likelihood ratio based formulation of successive cancellation list decoding. Our synthesis results show that, for the list size of $L=32$, our first proposed sorter is $14\%$ faster and $45\%$ smaller than existing sorters, while for smaller list sizes, our second sorter has a h…
Polar codes are of great interests because they provably achieve the capacity of both discrete and continuous memoryless channels while having an explicit construction. Most existing decoding algorithms of polar codes are based on bit-wise hard or soft decisions. In this paper, we propose symbol-decision successive cancellation (SC) and successive cancellation list (SCL) decoders for polar codes, which use symbol-wise hard or soft decisions for higher throughput or better error performance. First, we propose to use a recursive channel combination to calculate symbol-wise channel transition pro…
A successive cancellation (SC) decoder with inactivations is proposed as an efficient implementation of SC list (SCL) decoding over the binary erasure channel. The proposed decoder assigns a dummy variable to an information bit whenever it is erased during SC decoding and continues with decoding. Inactivated bits are resolved using information gathered from decoding frozen bits. This decoder leverages the structure of the Hadamard matrix, but can be applied to any linear code by representing it as a polar code with dynamic frozen bits. SCL decoders are partially characterized using density evo…
In this article, we propose an improved multiple feedback successive interference cancellation (IMF-SIC) algorithm for symbol vector detection in multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) spatial multiplexing systems. The multiple feedback (MF) strategy in successive interference cancellation (SIC) is based on the concept of shadow area constraint (SAC) where, if the decision falls in the shadow region multiple neighboring constellation points will be used in the decision feedback loop followed by the conventional SIC. The best candidate symbol from multiple neighboring symbols is selected using t…
We consider the estimation of an integer vector $\hbx\in \mathbb{Z}^n$ from the linear observation $\y=\A\hbx+\v$, where $\A\in\mathbb{R}^{m\times n}$ is a random matrix with independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) standard Gaussian $\mathcal{N}(0,1)$ entries, and $\v\in \mathbb{R}^m$ is a noise vector with i.i.d. $\mathcal{N}(0,σ^2 )$ entries with given $σ$. In digital communications, $\hbx$ is typically uniformly distributed over an $n$-dimensional box $\mathcal{B}$. For this estimation problem, successive interference cancellation (SIC) decoders are popular due to their low complex…
A method for efficiently successive cancellation (SC) decoding of polar codes with high-dimensional linear binary kernels (HDLBK) is presented and analyzed. We devise a $l$-expressions method which can obtain simplified recursive formulas of SC decoder in likelihood ratio form for arbitrary linear binary kernels to reduce the complexity of corresponding SC decoder. By considering the bit-channel transition probabilities $W_{G}^{(\cdot)}(\cdot|0)$ and $W_{G}^{(\cdot)}(\cdot|1)$ separately, a $W$-expressions method is proposed to further reduce the complexity of HDLBK based SC decoder. For a $m\…
This paper focuses on low complexity successive cancellation list (SCL) decoding of polar codes. In particular, using the fact that splitting may be unnecessary when the reliability of decoding the unfrozen bit is sufficiently high, a novel splitting rule is proposed. Based on this rule, it is conjectured that, if the correct path survives at some stage, it tends to survive till termination without splitting with high probability. On the other hand, the incorrect paths are more likely to split at the following stages. Motivated by these observations, a simple counter that counts the successive…
