Low Latency Decoder for Short Blocklength Polar Codes

Understand

Polar codes have been gaining a lot of interest due to it being the first coding scheme to provably achieve the symmetric capacity of a binary memoryless channel with an explicit construction.

• However, the main drawback of polar codes is the low throughput of its successive cancellation (SC) decoding.
• Simplified SC decoding algorithms of polar codes can be used to reduce the latency of the polar decode by faster processing of specific sub-codes in the polar code.
• By combining simplified SC with a list decoding technique, such as SC list (SCL) decoding, polar codes can cater to the two conflicting requirements of high reliability and low latency in ultra-reliable low-latency (URLLC) communication systems.