Row-Merged Polar Codes: Analysis, Design and Decoder Implementation

TL;DR

This paper introduces row-merged polar codes, a new family with improved distance properties and efficient decoding architectures, outperforming existing polar codes in error correction and implementation efficiency.

Contribution

It proposes a novel design methodology using low-complexity weight enumeration algorithms and develops high-throughput decoders for row-merged polar codes.

Findings

Outperform state-of-the-art CRC-aided polar codes in error correction.

Achieve higher throughput with fully pipelined decoder architectures.

Demonstrate implementation cost advantages in 12 nm technology.

Abstract

Row-merged polar codes are a family of pre-transformed polar codes (PTPCs) with little precoding overhead. Providing an improved distance spectrum over plain polar codes, they are capable to perform close to the finite-length capacity bounds. However, there is still a lack of efficient design procedures for row-merged polar codes. Using novel weight enumeration algorithms with low computational complexity, we propose a design methodology for row-merged polar codes that directly considers their minimum distance properties. The codes significantly outperform state-of-the-art cyclic redundancy check (CRC)-aided polar codes under successive cancellation list (SCL) decoding in error-correction performance. Furthermore, we present fast simplified successive cancellation list (Fast-SSCL) decoding of PTPCs, based on which we derive a high-throughput, unrolled architecture template for fully pipelined decoders. Implementation results of SCL decoders for row-merged polar codes in a 12 nm technology additionally demonstrate the superiority of these codes with respect to the implementation costs, compared to state-of-the-art reference decoder implementations.