# Optimal Puncturing of Polar Codes With a Fixed Information Set

## TL;DR

This paper proposes the worst quality puncturing (WQP) method for polar codes with a fixed information set, optimizing puncturing to minimize quality loss and outperform existing schemes.

## Contribution

It introduces WQP, a novel puncturing strategy for polar codes with fixed information sets, enhancing performance over previous methods.

## Key findings

- WQP outperforms existing puncturing schemes in simulations.
- WQP minimizes bit channel quality loss at punctured positions.
- The method is effective for fixed information set polar codes.

## Abstract

For a given polar code construction, the existing literature on puncturing for polar codes focuses in finding the optimal puncturing pattern, and then re-selecting the information set. This paper devotes itself to find the optimal puncturing pattern when the information set is fixed. Puncturing the coded bits corresponding to the worst quality bit channels, called the worst quality puncturing (WQP), is proposed, which is analyzed to minimize the bit channel quality loss at the punctured positions. Simulation results show that WQP outperforms the best existing puncturing schemes when the information set is fixed.