Design and Implementation of a Polar Codes Blind Detection Scheme

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel polar code blind detection scheme for 5G, featuring a two-phase decoding process with early stopping, and an efficient architecture implementation that meets 5G latency and resource constraints.

Contribution

It introduces a polar code blind detection scheme with a two-phase decoding and early stopping, along with a tunable decoder architecture suitable for 5G requirements.

Findings

Good missed detection and false alarm rates achieved

Substantial latency reductions due to early stopping

Implementation meets 5G area and latency constraints

Abstract

In blind detection, a set of candidates has to be decoded within a strict time constraint, to identify which transmissions are directed at the user equipment. Blind detection is required by the 3GPP LTE/LTE-Advanced standard, and it will be required in the 5th generation wireless communication standard (5G) as well. Polar codes have been selected for use in 5G: thus, the issue of blind detection of polar codes must be addressed. We propose a polar code blind detection scheme where the user ID is transmitted instead of some of the frozen bits. A first, coarse decoding phase helps selecting a subset of candidates that is decoded by a more powerful algorithm: an early stopping criterion is also introduced for the second decoding phase. Simulations results show good missed detection and false alarm rates, along with substantial latency gains thanks to early stopping. We then propose an architecture to implement the devised blind detection scheme, based on a tunable decoder that can be used for both phases. The architecture is synthesized and implementation results are reported for various system parameters. The reported area occupation and latency, obtained in 65 nm CMOS technology, are able to meet 5G requirements, and are guaranteed to meet them with even less resource usage in the latest technology nodes.