Row-Merged Polar Codes: Analysis, Design and Decoder Implementation

Author:

Andreas Zunker, Marvin Geiselhart, Lucas Johannsen, Claus Kestel, Stephan ten Brink, Timo Vogt, Norbert Wehn

Keyword:

Computer Science, Information Theory, Information Theory (cs.IT)

journal:

date:

2023-12-22 00:00:00

Abstract

Row-merged polar codes are a family of pre-transformed polar codes (PTPCs) with little precoding overhead. Providing an improved distance spectrum over plain polar codes, they are capable to perform close to the finite-length capacity bounds. However, there is still a lack of efficient design procedures for row-merged polar codes. Using novel weight enumeration algorithms with low computational complexity, we propose a design methodology for row-merged polar codes that directly considers their minimum distance properties. The codes significantly outperform state-of-the-art cyclic redundancy check (CRC)-aided polar codes under successive cancellation list (SCL) decoding in error-correction performance. Furthermore, we present fast simplified successive cancellation list (Fast-SSCL) decoding of PTPCs, based on which we derive a high-throughput, unrolled architecture template for fully pipelined decoders. Implementation results of SCL decoders for row-merged polar codes in a 12 nm technology additionally demonstrate the superiority of these codes with respect to the implementation costs, compared to state-of-the-art reference decoder implementations.

PDF: Row-Merged Polar Codes: Analysis, Design and Decoder Implementation.pdf