An Adaptive Successive Cancellation List Decoder for Polar Codes with Cyclic Redundancy Check

TL;DR

This paper introduces an adaptive SC-List decoder for polar codes with CRC that reduces complexity while maintaining near-optimal error performance, by iteratively adjusting the list size until CRC success.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel adaptive decoding algorithm for polar codes with CRC, significantly reducing decoding complexity compared to fixed list size methods.

Findings

Achieves FER=0.001 at Eb/No=1.1dB for (2048, 1024) polar code with CRC

Reduces decoding complexity significantly compared to traditional fixed list size decoders

Performs within 0.2dB of the theoretical limit at the tested block length

Abstract

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 limit at this block length.