Complexity-Adjustable SC Decoding of Polar Codes for Energy Consumption Reduction

TL;DR

This paper introduces an energy-efficient, complexity-adjustable decoding algorithm for polar codes that reduces memory use significantly without sacrificing error correction performance, suitable for mobile devices with limited energy resources.

Contribution

The paper presents an enhanced list-aided successive cancellation stack decoding algorithm with adjustable complexity and a new LLR-threshold scheme to reduce memory consumption.

Findings

Reduces storage space by up to 70%

Maintains error correction performance

Provides flexible tradeoff between complexity and speed

Abstract

This paper proposes an enhanced list-aided successive cancellation stack (ELSCS) decoding algorithm with adjustable decoding complexity. In addition, a logarithmic likelihood ratio (LLR)-threshold based path extension scheme is designed to further reduce the memory consumption of stack decoding. Numerical simulation results show that without affecting the error correction performance, the proposed ELSCS decoding algorithm provides a flexible tradeoff between time complexity and computational complexity, while reducing storage space up to $70\%$. Based on the fact that most mobile devices operate in environments with stringent energy budget to support diverse applications, the proposed scheme is a promising candidate for meeting requirements of different applications while maintaining a low computational complexity and computing resource utilization.