In successive cancellation list (SCL) decoding, the tree pruning operation retains the L best paths with respect to metric at every decoding step. However, the correct path might be among the L worst paths due to imposed penalties. In this case, the correct path is pruned and the decoding process fails. In this work, we propose a scheme for additional decoding attempts when decoding fails, in which the pruning window does not necessarily select the L best paths, but this window is shifted between positions 1 and 2L in the sorted list. In the simplest form, the L worst paths are selected at the decoding step where the probability of elimination of the correct paths is high. Additionally, we generalize the scheme and propose a number of variants such as constrained shifting, nested shifting and shifting under segmented decoding, aiming to reduce the computational complexity. The numerical results for polar codes of length 512 with code rates 0.5 and 0.8 and list sizes L=2, 8, 32, show that the shifted-pruning scheme can provide 0.25-0.5 dB gain in error correction performance, while the average computational complexity approaches the conventional list decoding complexity at practical FER ranges.
Sorting operation is one of the main bottlenecks for the successive-cancellation list (SCL) decoding. This paper introduces an improvement to the SCL decoding for polar and pre-transformed polar codes that reduces the number of sorting operations without degrading the code's error-correction performance. In an SCL decoding with an optimum metric function we show that, on average, the correct branch's bit-metric value must be equal to the bit-channel capacity, and on the other hand, the average bit-metric value of a wrong branch can be at most zero. This implies that a wrong path's partial path…
Polar codes under cyclic redundancy check aided successive cancellation list (CA-SCL) decoding can outperform the turbo codes and the LDPC codes when code lengths are configured to be several kilobits. In order to reduce the decoding complexity, a novel tree-pruning scheme for the \mbox{SCL/CA-SCL} decoding algorithms is proposed in this paper. In each step of the decoding procedure, the candidate paths with metrics less than a threshold are dropped directly to avoid the unnecessary computations for the path searching on the descendant branches of them. Given a candidate path, an upper bound o…
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…
Successive cancellation (SC) process is an essential component of various decoding algorithms used for polar codes and their variants. Rewinding this process seems trivial if we have access to all intermediate log-likelihood ratios (LLRs) and partial sums. However, as the block length increases, retaining all of the intermediate information becomes inefficient and impractical. Rewinding the SC process in a memory-efficient way is a problem that we address in this paper. We first explore the properties of the SC process based on the binary representation of the bit indices by introducing a new …
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…
We introduce dual-polarization probing codes based on two circularly shifted frequency sweep signals enabling perfect channel estimation. This is achieved with a probing length equal to at least twice the fiber round-trip propagation time.
We propose a new family of polar coding which realizes high coding gain, low complexity, and high throughput by introducing a protograph-based design. The proposed technique called as quasi-cyclic (QC) polar codes can be highly parallelized without sacrificing decoding complexity. We analyze short cycles in the protograph polar codes and develop a design method to increase the girth. Our approach can resolve the long-standing unsolved problem that belief propagation (BP) decoding does not work well for polar codes due to the inherently short cycles. We demonstrate that a high lifting factor of…
We describe a successive-cancellation \emph{list} decoder for polar codes, which is a generalization of the classic successive-cancellation decoder of Arıkan. In the proposed list decoder, up to $L$ decoding paths are considered concurrently at each decoding stage. Then, a single codeword is selected from the list as output. If the most likely codeword is selected, simulation results show that the resulting performance is very close to that of a maximum-likelihood decoder, even for moderate values of $L$. Alternatively, if a "genie" is allowed to pick the codeword from the list, the results ar…
We consider near maximum-likelihood (ML) decoding of short linear block codes. In particular, we propose a novel decoding approach based on neural belief propagation (NBP) decoding recently introduced by Nachmani et al. in which we allow a different parity-check matrix in each iteration of the algorithm. The key idea is to consider NBP decoding over an overcomplete parity-check matrix and use the weights of NBP as a measure of the importance of the check nodes (CNs) to decoding. The unimportant CNs are then pruned. In contrast to NBP, which performs decoding on a given fixed parity-check matri…
The 5th generation wireless systems (5G) standardization process of the 3rd generation partnership project (3GPP) chose polar codes as a channel coding scheme for the control channel. In case of downlink control information, polar codes are concatenated with distributed distributed cyclic redundancy check (CRC). Whereas CRC bits allow to improve the performance of successive cancellation list (SCL) decoders by improving distance properties, distributed CRC bits allow for path pruning and decoding early-termination. In this paper, we show how to take advantage of the distributed CRC to improve …
We describe a novel approach to interpret a polar code as a low-density parity-check (LDPC)-like code with an underlying sparse decoding graph. This sparse graph is based on the encoding factor graph of polar codes and is suitable for conventional belief propagation (BP) decoding. We discuss several pruning techniques based on the check node decoder (CND) and variable node decoder (VND) update equations, significantly reducing the size (i.e., decoding complexity) of the parity-check matrix. As a result, iterative polar decoding can then be conducted on a sparse graph, akin to the traditional w…
We exploit the redundancy of the language-based source to help polar decoding. By judging the validity of decoded words in the decoded sequence with the help of a dictionary, the polar list decoder constantly detects erroneous paths after every few bits are decoded. This path-pruning technique based on joint decoding has advantages over stand-alone polar list decoding in that most decoding errors in early stages are corrected. In order to facilitate the joint decoding, we first propose a construction of dynamic dictionary using a trie and show an efficient way to trace the dictionary during de…
Polar codes are a class of linear error correction codes which provably attain channel capacity with infinite codeword lengths. Finite length polar codes have been adopted into the 5th Generation 3GPP standard for New Radio, though their native length is limited to powers of 2. Utilizing multiple polarizing matrices increases the length flexibility of polar codes at the expense of a more complicated decoding process. Successive cancellation (SC) is the standard polar decoder and has time complexity $\mathcal{O}(N \log N)$ due to its sequential nature. However, some patterns in the frozen set m…
Long polar codes can achieve the symmetric capacity of arbitrary binary-input discrete memoryless channels under a low complexity successive cancelation (SC) decoding algorithm. However, for polar codes with short and moderate code length, the decoding performance of the SC algorithm is inferior. The cyclic redundancy check (CRC) aided successive cancelation list (SCL) decoding algorithm has better error performance than the SC algorithm for short or moderate polar codes. In this paper, we propose an efficient list decoder architecture for the CRC aided SCL algorithm, based on both algorithmic…
Flexibility is one mandatory aspect of channel coding in modern wireless communication systems. Among other things, the channel decoder has to support several code lengths and code rates. This need for flexibility applies to polar codes that are considered for control channels in the future 5G standard. This paper presents a new generic and flexible implementation of a software Successive Cancellation List (SCL) decoder. A large set of parameters can be fine-tuned dynamically without re-compiling the software source code: the code length, the code rate, the frozen bits set, the puncturing patt…
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…
