Efficient Belief Propagation List Ordered Statistics Decoding of Polar Codes

Abstract: New algorithms for efficient decoding of polar codes (which may be CRC-augmented), transmitted over either a binary erasure channel (BEC) or an additive white Gaussian noise channel (AWGNC), are presented. We start by presenting a new efficient exact maximum likelihood decoding algorithm for the BEC based on inactivation decoding and analyze its computational complexity. This algorithm applies a matrix triangulation process on a sparse polar code parity check matrix, followed by solving a small size linear system over GF(2). We then consider efficient decoding of polar codes, transmitted over the AWGNC. The algorithm applies CRC-aided belief propagation list (CBPL) decoding, followed by ordered statistics decoding (OSD) of low order. Even when the reprocessing order of the OSD is as low as one, the new decoder is shown to significantly improve on plain CBPL. To implement the OSD efficiently, we adapt the matrix triangulation algorithm from the BEC case. We also indicate how the decoding algorithms can be implemented in parallel for low latency decoding. Numerical simulations are used to evaluate the performance and computational complexity of the new algorithms.