In this paper, we introduce two novel methods to design outer polar codes for two previously proposed concatenated polar code architectures: augmented polar codes and local-global polar codes. These methods include a stopping set (SS) construction and a nonstationary density evolution (NDE) construction. Simulation results demonstrate the advantage of these methods over previously proposed constructions based on density evolution (DE) and LLR evolution.
In this paper, the analysis of the performance of the concatenation of a short polar code with an outer binary linear block code is addressed from a distance spectrum viewpoint. The analysis targets the case where an outer cyclic code is employed together with an inner systematic polar code. A concatenated code ensemble is introduced placing an interleaver at the input of the polar encoder. The introduced ensemble allows deriving bounds on the achievable error rates under maximum likelihood decoding, by applying the union bound to the (expurgated) average weight enumerators. The analysis sugge…
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…
A concatenated coding scheme over binary memoryless symmetric (BMS) channels using a polarization transformation followed by outer sub-codes is analyzed. Achievable error exponents and upper bounds on the error rate are derived. The first bound is obtained using outer codes which are typical linear codes from the ensemble of parity check matrices whose elements are chosen independently and uniformly. As a byproduct of this bound, it determines the required rate split of the total rate to the rates of the outer codes. A lower bound on the error exponent that holds for all BMS channels with a gi…
A reduced complexity sequential decoding algorithm for polar (sub)codes is described. The proposed approach relies on a decomposition of the polar (sub)code being decoded into a number of outer codes, and on-demand construction of codewords of these codes in the descending order of their probability. Construction of such codewords is implemented by fast decoding algorithms, which are available for many codes arising in the decomposition of polar codes. Further complexity reduction is achieved by taking hard decisions of the intermediate LLRs, and avoiding decoding of some outer codes. Data str…
In this paper, we investigate a coupled polar code architecture that supports both local and global decoding. This local-global construction is motivated by practical applications in data storage and transmission where reduced-latency recovery of sub-blocks of the coded information is required. Local decoding allows random access to sub-blocks of the full code block. When local decoding performance is insufficient, global decoding provides improved data reliability. The coupling scheme incorporates a systematic outer polar code and a partitioned mapping of the outer codeword to semipolarized b…
Polar coding was conceived originally as a technique for boosting the cutoff rate of sequential decoding, along the lines of earlier schemes of Pinsker and Massey. The key idea in boosting the cutoff rate is to take a vector channel (either given or artificially built), split it into multiple correlated subchannels, and employ a separate sequential decoder on each subchannel. Polar coding was originally designed to be a low-complexity recursive channel combining and splitting operation of this type, to be used as the inner code in a concatenated scheme with outer convolutional coding and seque…
It is known that the bit errors of polar codes with successive cancellation (SC) decoding are coupled. However, existing concatenation schemes of polar codes with other error correction codes rarely take this coupling effect into consideration. To achieve a better error performance of concatenated systems with polar codes as inner codes, one can divide all bits in an outer block into different polar blocks to completely de-correlate the possible coupled errors in the transmitter side. We call this interleaving a blind interleaving (BI) which serves as a benchmark. Two BI schemes, termed BI-DP …
We improve the method in \cite{Seidl:10} for increasing the finite-lengh performance of polar codes by protecting specific, less reliable symbols with simple outer repetition codes. Decoding of the scheme integrates easily in the known successive decoding algorithms for polar codes. Overall rate and block length remain unchanged, the decoding complexity is at most doubled. A comparison to related methods for performance improvement of polar codes is drawn.
A new algorithm for efficient exact maximum likelihood decoding of polar codes (which may be CRC augmented), transmitted over the binary erasure channel, is presented. The algorithm applies a matrix triangulation process on a sparse polar code parity check matrix, followed by solving a small size linear system over GF(2). To implement the matrix triangulation, we apply belief propagation decoding type operations. We also indicate how this decoder can be implemented in parallel for low latency decoding. Numerical simulations are used to evaluate the performance and computational complexity of t…
A polar-coded modulation scheme for deep-space optical communication is proposed. The photon counting Poisson channel with pulse position modulation (PPM) is considered. We use the fact that PPM is particularly well suited to be used with multilevel codes to design a polar-coded modulation scheme for the system in consideration. The construction of polar codes for the Poisson channel based on Gaussian approximation is demonstrated to be accurate. The proposed scheme uses a cyclic redundancy check outer code and a successive cancellation decoder with list decoding and it is shown that it outper…
Targeting high-throughput and low-power communications, we implement two successive cancellation (SC) decoders for polar codes. With $16nm$ ASIC technology, the area efficiency and energy efficiency are $4Tbps/mm^2$ and $0.63pJ/bit$, respectively, for the unrolled decoder, and $561Gbps/mm^2$ and $1.21pJ/bit$, respectively, for the recursive decoder. To achieve such a high throughput, a novel code construction, coined as fast polar codes, is proposed and jointly optimized with a highly-parallel SC decoding architecture. First, we reuse existing modules to fast decode more outer code blocks, and…
It's known that the bit errors of polar codes with successive cancellation (SC) decoding are coupled. We call the coupled information bits the correlated bits. In this paper, concatenation schemes are studied for polar codes (as inner codes) and LDPC codes (as outer codes). In a conventional concatenation scheme, to achieve a better BER performance, one can divide all $N_l$ bits in a LDPC block into $N_l$ polar blocks to completely de-correlate the possible coupled errors. In this paper, we propose a novel interleaving scheme between a LDPC code and a polar code which breaks the correlation of…
This article presents a novel enhancement to the random spreading based coding scheme developed by Pradhan et al.\ for the unsourced multiple access channel. The original coding scheme features a polar outer code in conjunction with a successive cancellation list decoder (SCLD) and a hard-input soft-output MMSE estimator. In contrast, the proposed scheme employs a soft-input soft-output MMSE estimator for multi-user detection. This is accomplished by replacing the SCLD based polar code with an LDPC code amenable to belief propagation decoding. This novel framework is leveraged to successfully …
In this work we propose an encoding and decoding framework for staircase codes based on non-systematic polar codes as component codes. The staircase structure allows for efficient parallelized decoding, while the polar component codes allow to benefit from the flexible structure and efficient soft-decision decoding algorithms. To enhance the performance of the polar staircase codes, we concatenate the polar component codes with cyclic redundancy check (CRC) outer codes, and we add interleavers within the staircase structure that are specific to polar code properties. The CRCs also allow to sub…
Constructing efficient low-rate error-correcting codes with low-complexity encoding and decoding have become increasingly important for applications involving ultra-low-power devices such as Internet-of-Things (IoT) networks. To this end, schemes based on concatenating the state-of-the-art codes at moderate rates with repetition codes have emerged as practical solutions deployed in various standards. In this paper, we propose a novel mechanism for concatenating outer polar codes with inner repetition codes which we refer to as polar coded repetition. More specifically, we propose to transmit a…
Owing to their capacity-achieving performance and low encoding and decoding complexity, polar codes have drawn much research interests recently. Successive cancellation decoding (SCD) and belief propagation decoding (BPD) are two common approaches for decoding polar codes. SCD is sequential in nature while BPD can run in parallel. Thus BPD is more attractive for low latency applications. However BPD has some performance degradation at higher SNR when compared with SCD. Concatenating LDPC with Polar codes is one popular approach to enhance the performance of BPD , where a short LDPC code is use…
A polar-coded transmission (PCT) scheme with joint channel estimation and decoding is proposed for channels with unknown channel state information (CSI). The CSI is estimated via successive cancellation (SC) decoding and the constraints imposed by the frozen bits. SC list decoding with an outer code improves performance, including resolving a phase ambiguity when using quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK) and Gray labeling. Simulations with 5G polar codes and QPSK show gains of up to $2$~dB at a frame error rate (FER) of $10^{-4}$ over pilot-assisted transmission for various non-coherent model…
A polar coding scheme is proposed for the Wiretap Broadcast Channel with two legitimate receivers and one eavesdropper. We consider a model in which the transmitter wishes to send different confidential (and non-confidential) information to each legitimate receiver. First, we compare two inner-bounds on the achievable region of this model from the literature, and then we design a polar coding scheme that achieves the stronger one. In the proposed scheme, the encoding uses polar-based Marton's coding, where one inner-layer must be reliably decoded by both legitimate receivers, and each receiver…
