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arXiv:1701.07738

On Deep Learning-Based Channel Decoding

Tobias Gruber, Sebastian Cammerer, Jakob Hoydis, Stephan ten Brink

Published Jan 26, 2017• 42 citations
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Abstract

We revisit the idea of using deep neural networks for one-shot decoding of random and structured codes, such as polar codes. Although it is possible to achieve maximum a posteriori (MAP) bit error rate (BER) performance for both code families and for short codeword lengths, we observe that (i) structured codes are easier to learn and (ii) the neural network is able to generalize to codewords that it has never seen during training for structured, but not for random codes. These results provide some evidence that neural networks can learn a form of decoding algorithm, rather than only a simple classifier. We introduce the metric normalized validation error (NVE) in order to further investigate the potential and limitations of deep learning-based decoding with respect to performance and complexity.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.1701.07738

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We propose a self-supervised deep learning-based decoding scheme that enables one-shot decoding of polar codes. In the proposed scheme, rather than using the information bit vectors as labels for training the neural network (NN) through supervised learning as the conventional scheme did, the NN is trained to function as a bounded distance decoder by leveraging the generator matrix of polar codes through self-supervised learning. This approach eliminates the reliance on predefined labels, empowering the potential to train directly on the actual data within communication systems and thereby enhancing the applicability. Furthermore, computer simulations demonstrate that (i) the bit error rate (BER) and block error rate (BLER) performances of the proposed scheme can approach those of the maximum a posteriori (MAP) decoder for very short packets and (ii) the proposed NN decoder (NND) exhibits much superior generalization ability compared to the conventional one.
The training complexity of deep learning-based channel decoders scales exponentially with the codebook size and therefore with the number of information bits. Thus, neural network decoding (NND) is currently only feasible for very short block lengths. In this work, we show that the conventional iterative decoding algorithm for polar codes can be enhanced when sub-blocks of the decoder are replaced by neural network (NN) based components. Thus, we partition the encoding graph into smaller sub-blocks and train them individually, closely approaching maximum a posteriori (MAP) performance per sub-block. These blocks are then connected via the remaining conventional belief propagation decoding stage(s). The resulting decoding algorithm is non-iterative and inherently enables a highlevel of parallelization, while showing a competitive bit error rate (BER) performance. We examine the degradation through partitioning and compare the resulting decoder to state-of-the art polar decoders such as successive cancellation list and belief propagation decoding.
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We investigate the application of machine learning techniques (in particular, deep neural networks, DNN) to improve the decoding algorithms of short quasi-cyclic low-density paritycheck (LDPC) codes adopted to the 5G standard. We note that straightforward application of general-purpose DNNs is not possible due to the curse of dimensionality problem – the training set size grows exponentially with the number of information bits. In our opinion, the only way to deal with this problem is to combine deep learning methods with existing decoding algorithms. We start with a Tanner-based neural network decoder with Min-Sum activation functions proposed by Nachmani et al. and extend it as follows. First, the quasi-cyclic nature of 5G LDPC codes allows us to use a single weight per circular matrix (circulant). We refer to this as weight sharing. This idea significantly reduces the training time, preserving the error-correcting performance. Second, we add residual connections to our NN architecture. Residual connections improve the performance and reduce the training time. We also present the results for the rate and length adaptation techniques. Rate adaptation allows multiple DNNs corresponding to different coding rates to run with a single set of trained weights. Length adaptation allows optimally reusing weights for multiple lifting size indices.