A Node-Based Polar List Decoder with Frame Interleaving and Ensemble Decoding Support
Yuqing Ren, Leyu Zhang, Ludovic Damien Blanc, Yifei Shen, Xinwei Li,, Alexios Balatsoukas-Stimming, Chuan Zhang, Andreas Burg

TL;DR
This paper introduces a hardware architecture for node-based SCL decoders that enables simultaneous decoding of two frames, significantly improving throughput and error performance for 5G NR polar codes.
Contribution
It proposes a frame-interleaving architecture and dynamic strategies to eliminate stalls, enhancing throughput and flexibility in node-based SCL decoding.
Findings
Nearly 2x throughput improvement over baseline decoders
Achieves 3.34 Gbps throughput on 28nm ASIC
Compatible with all 5G NR polar codes
Abstract
Node-based successive cancellation list (SCL) decoding has received considerable attention in wireless communications for its significant reduction in decoding latency, particularly with 5G New Radio (NR) polar codes. However, the existing node-based SCL decoders are constrained by sequential processing, leading to complicated and data-dependent computational units that introduce unavoidable stalls, reducing hardware efficiency. In this paper, we present a frame-interleaving hardware architecture for a generalized node-based SCL decoder. By efficiently reusing otherwise idle computational units, two independent frames can be decoded simultaneously, resulting in a significant throughput gain. Based on this new architecture, we further exploit graph ensembles to diversify the decoding space, thus enhancing the error-correcting performance with a limited list size. Two dynamic strategies…
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Taxonomy
TopicsError Correcting Code Techniques · Advanced Wireless Communication Techniques · Coding theory and cryptography
