Does Gaussian Approximation Work Well for The Long-Length Polar Code Construction?

TL;DR

This paper introduces new principles and a multi-segment approximation function for Gaussian approximation in polar code construction, significantly improving accuracy and performance for long-length codes.

Contribution

It proposes novel concepts of PVS and PRS, a new CLE metric, and a multi-segment approximation method to enhance Gaussian approximation accuracy in long polar code construction.

Findings

Improved polar code performance at long lengths.

New approximation rules reduce subchannel selection errors.

Numerical results validate the effectiveness of the proposed methods.

Abstract

Gaussian approximation (GA) is widely used to construct polar codes. However when the code length is long, the subchannel selection inaccuracy due to the calculation error of conventional approximate GA (AGA), which uses a two-segment approximation function, results in a catastrophic performance loss. In this paper, new principles to design the GA approximation functions for polar codes are proposed. First, we introduce the concepts of polarization violation set (PVS) and polarization reversal set (PRS) to explain the essential reasons that the conventional AGA scheme cannot work well for the long-length polar code construction. In fact, these two sets will lead to the rank error of subsequent subchannels, which means the orders of subchannels are misaligned, which is a severe problem for polar code construction. Second, we propose a new metric, named cumulative-logarithmic error (CLE), to quantitatively evaluate the remainder approximation error of AGA in logarithm. We derive the upper bound of CLE to simplify its calculation. Finally, guided by PVS, PRS and CLE bound analysis, we propose new construction rules based on a multi-segment approximation function, which obviously improve the calculation accuracy of AGA so as to ensure the excellent performance of polar codes especially for the long code lengths. Numerical and simulation results indicate that the proposed AGA schemes are critical to construct the high-performance polar codes.