Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Log inSign up
Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Blog
Job Board
Q3AS

© 2026 Aqora Quantum S.A.S.

TermsPrivacyLegal Notice

arXiv:2311.17774 · Conference on Information Sciences and Systems

Enumeration of Minimum Weight Codewords of Pre-Transformed Polar Codes by Tree Intersection

Andreas Zunker, Marvin Geiselhart, Stephan ten Brink

Published Mar 13, 2024• 13 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Pre-transformed polar codes (PTPCs) form a class of codes that perform close to the finite-length capacity bounds. The minimum distance and the number of minimum weight codewords are two decisive properties for their performance. In this work, we propose an efficient algorithm for determining the number of minimum weight codewords of general PTPCs that eliminates all redundant visits to nodes of the search tree, thus reducing the computational complexity typically by several orders of magnitude compared to state-of-the-art algorithms. This reduction in complexity allows, for the first time, the minimum distance properties to be directly considered in the code design of PTPCs. The algorithm is demonstrated for randomly pre-transformed Reed-Muller (RM) codes and polarization-adjusted convolutional (PAC) codes. Furthermore, we design optimal polynomials for PAC codes with this algorithm, minimizing the number of minimum weight codewords.

DOI
10.1109/ciss59072.2024.10480163

Related papers

On the Minimum Weight Codewords of PAC Codes: The Impact of Pre-Transformation

Mohammad Rowshan, Jinhong Yuan

The minimum Hamming distance of a linear block code is the smallest number of bit changes required to transform one valid codeword into another. The code’s minimum distance determines the code’s error-correcting capabilities. Furthermore, The number of minimum weight codewords, a.k.a. error coefficient, gives a good comparative measure for the block error rate (BLER) of linear block codes with identical minimum distance, in particular at a high SNR regime under maximum likelihood (ML) decoding. A code with a smaller error coefficient would give a lower BLER. Unlike polar codes, a closed-form expression for the enumeration of the error coefficient of polarization-adjusted convolutional (PAC) codes is yet unknown. As PAC codes are convolutionally pre-transformed polar codes, we study the impact of pre-transformation on polar codes in terms of minimum Hamming distance and error coefficient by partitioning the codewords into cosets. We show that the minimum distance of PAC codes does not decrease; however, the pre-transformation may reduce the error coefficient depending on the choice of convolutional polynomial. We recognize the properties of the cosets where pre-transformation is ineffective in decreasing the error coefficient, giving a lower bound for the error coefficient. Then, we propose a low-complexity enumeration method that determines the number of minimum weight codewords of PAC codes relying on the error coefficient of polar codes. That is, given the error coefficient Awmin of polar codes, we determine the reduction X in the error coefficient due to convolutional pre-transformation in PAC coding and subtract it from the error coefficient of polar codes, Awmin - X. Furthermore, we numerically analyze the tightness of the lower bound and the impact of the choice of the convolutional polynomial on the error coefficient based on the sub-patterns in the polynomial’s coefficients. Eventually, we show how we can further reduce the error coefficient in the cosets.

IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Information Theory•Jan 1, 2023•22 citations

On the Distribution of Weights Less Than 2w minin Polar Codes

Zicheng Ye, Yuan Li, Huazi Zhang +3 more

The number of low-weight codewords is critical to the performance of error-correcting codes. In 1970, Kasami and Tokura characterized the codewords of Reed-Muller (RM) codes whose weights are less than 2wmin, wherewminrepresents the minimum weight. In this paper, we extend their results to decreasing polar codes. We present the closed-form expressions for the number of codewords in decreasing polar codes with weights less than 2wmin. Moreover, the proposed enumeration algorithm runs in polynomial time with respect to the code length.

IEEE Transactions on Communications•May 7, 2024•11 citations

On the Weight Distribution of Weights Less than $2w_{\min}$ in Polar Codes

Zicheng Ye, Yuan Li, Huazi Zhang +3 more

The number of low-weight codewords is critical to the performance of error-correcting codes. In 1970, Kasami and Tokura characterized the codewords of Reed-Muller (RM) codes whose weights are less than $2w_{\min}$, where $w_{\min}$ represents the minimum weight. In this paper, we extend their results to decreasing polar codes. We present the closed-form expressions for the number of codewords in decreasing polar codes with weights less than $2w_{\min}$. Moreover, the proposed enumeration algorithm runs in polynomial time with respect to the code length.

arXiv:2308.10024•Aug 19, 2023•0 citations

A Pre-Transformation Method to Increase the Minimum Distance of Polar-Like Codes

Samet Gelincik, Philippe Mary, Anne Savard +1 more

Reed Muller (RM) codes are known for their good minimum distance. One can use their structure to construct polar-like codes with good distance properties by choosing the information set as the rows of the polarization matrix with the highest Hamming weight, instead of the most reliable synthetic channels. However, the information length options of RM codes are quite limited due to their specific structure. In this work, we present sufficient conditions to increase the information length by at least one bit for some underlying RM codes and in order to obtain pre-transformed polar-like codes with the same minimum distance than lower rate codes.The proofs give a constructive method to choose the row triples to be merged together to increase the information length of the code and they follow from partitioning the row indices of the polar encoding matrix with respect to the recursive structure imposed by the binary representation of row indices. Moreover, our findings are combined with the method presented in [2] to further reduce the number of minimum weight codewords. Numerical results show that the designed codes perform close to the meta-converse bound at short blocklengths and better than the polarization-adjusted-convolutional polar codes with the same parameters.

arXiv:2202.04366•Feb 9, 2022•3 citations

On the Weight Spectrum Improvement of Pre-transformed Reed-Muller Codes and Polar Codes

Yuan Li, Zicheng Ye, Huazi Zhang +3 more

Pre-transformation with an upper-triangular matrix (including cyclic redundancy check (CRC), parity-check (PC) and polarization-adjusted convolutional (PAC) codes) improves the weight spectrum of Reed-Muller (RM) codes and polar codes significantly. However, a theoretical analysis to quantify the improvement is missing. In this paper, we provide asymptotic analysis on the number of low-weight codewords of the original and pre-transformed RM codes respectively, and prove that pre-transformation significantly reduces low-weight codewords, even in the order sense. For polar codes, we prove that the average number of minimum-weight codewords does not increase after pre-transformation. Both results confirm the advantages of pre-transformation.

arXiv:2307.06599•IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT)•Jun 25, 2023•8 citations

Preserving the Minimum Distance of Polar-Like Codes while Increasing the Information Length

Samet Gelincik, Philippe Mary, Anne Savard +1 more

Reed Muller (RM) codes are known for their good minimum distance. One can use their structure to construct polar-like codes with good distance properties by choosing the information set as the rows of the polarization matrix with the highest Hamming weight, instead of the most reliable synthetic channels. However, the information length options of RM codes are quite limited due to their specific structure. In this work, we present sufficient conditions to increase the information length by at least one bit for some underlying RM codes and in order to obtain pre-transformed polar-like codes with the same minimum distance than lower rate codes. Moreover, our findings are combined with the method presented in [1] to further reduce the number of minimum weight codewords. Numerical results show that the designed codes perform close to the meta-converse bound at short blocklengths and better than the polarized adjusted convolutional polar codes with the same parameters.

IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT)•Jun 26, 2022•1 citation
Pre-transformed polar codes (PTPCs) form a class of codes that perform close to the finite-length capacity bounds. The minimum distance and the number of minimum weight codewords are two decisive properties for their performance. In this work, we propose an efficient algorithm for determining the number of minimum weight codewords of general PTPCs that eliminates all redundant visits to nodes of the search tree, thus reducing the computational complexity typically by several orders of magnitude compared to state-of-the-art algorithms. This reduction in complexity allows, for the first time, the minimum distance properties to be directly considered in the code design of PTPCs. The algorithm is demonstrated for randomly pre-transformed Reed-Muller (RM) codes and polarization-adjusted convolutional (PAC) codes. Furthermore, we design optimal polynomials for PAC codes with this algorithm, minimizing the number of minimum weight codewords.
The minimum Hamming distance of a linear block code is the smallest number of bit changes required to transform one valid codeword into another. The code’s minimum distance determines the code’s error-correcting capabilities. Furthermore, The number of minimum weight codewords, a.k.a. error coefficient, gives a good comparative measure for the block error rate (BLER) of linear block codes with identical minimum distance, in particular at a high SNR regime under maximum likelihood (ML) decoding. A code with a smaller error coefficient would give a lower BLER. Unlike polar codes, a closed-form expression for the enumeration of the error coefficient of polarization-adjusted convolutional (PAC) codes is yet unknown. As PAC codes are convolutionally pre-transformed polar codes, we study the impact of pre-transformation on polar codes in terms of minimum Hamming distance and error coefficient by partitioning the codewords into cosets. We show that the minimum distance of PAC codes does not decrease; however, the pre-transformation may reduce the error coefficient depending on the choice of convolutional polynomial. We recognize the properties of the cosets where pre-transformation is ineffective in decreasing the error coefficient, giving a lower bound for the error coefficient. Then, we propose a low-complexity enumeration method that determines the number of minimum weight codewords of PAC codes relying on the error coefficient of polar codes. That is, given the error coefficient Awmin of polar codes, we determine the reduction X in the error coefficient due to convolutional pre-transformation in PAC coding and subtract it from the error coefficient of polar codes, Awmin - X. Furthermore, we numerically analyze the tightness of the lower bound and the impact of the choice of the convolutional polynomial on the error coefficient based on the sub-patterns in the polynomial’s coefficients. Eventually, we show how we can further reduce the error coefficient in the cosets.
The number of low-weight codewords is critical to the performance of error-correcting codes. In 1970, Kasami and Tokura characterized the codewords of Reed-Muller (RM) codes whose weights are less than 2wmin, wherewminrepresents the minimum weight. In this paper, we extend their results to decreasing polar codes. We present the closed-form expressions for the number of codewords in decreasing polar codes with weights less than 2wmin. Moreover, the proposed enumeration algorithm runs in polynomial time with respect to the code length.
On the Weight Distribution of Weights Less than 2wmin⁡2w_{\min}2wmin​ in Polar Codes
The number of low-weight codewords is critical to the performance of error-correcting codes. In 1970, Kasami and Tokura characterized the codewords of Reed-Muller (RM) codes whose weights are less than 2wmin⁡2w_{\min}2wmin​, where wmin⁡w_{\min}wmin​ represents the minimum weight. In this paper, we extend their results to decreasing polar codes. We present the closed-form expressions for the number of codewords in decreasing polar codes with weights less than 2wmin⁡2w_{\min}2wmin​. Moreover, the proposed enumeration algorithm runs in polynomial time with respect to the code length.
Reed Muller (RM) codes are known for their good minimum distance. One can use their structure to construct polar-like codes with good distance properties by choosing the information set as the rows of the polarization matrix with the highest Hamming weight, instead of the most reliable synthetic channels. However, the information length options of RM codes are quite limited due to their specific structure. In this work, we present sufficient conditions to increase the information length by at least one bit for some underlying RM codes and in order to obtain pre-transformed polar-like codes with the same minimum distance than lower rate codes.The proofs give a constructive method to choose the row triples to be merged together to increase the information length of the code and they follow from partitioning the row indices of the polar encoding matrix with respect to the recursive structure imposed by the binary representation of row indices. Moreover, our findings are combined with the method presented in [2] to further reduce the number of minimum weight codewords. Numerical results show that the designed codes perform close to the meta-converse bound at short blocklengths and better than the polarization-adjusted-convolutional polar codes with the same parameters.
Pre-transformation with an upper-triangular matrix (including cyclic redundancy check (CRC), parity-check (PC) and polarization-adjusted convolutional (PAC) codes) improves the weight spectrum of Reed-Muller (RM) codes and polar codes significantly. However, a theoretical analysis to quantify the improvement is missing. In this paper, we provide asymptotic analysis on the number of low-weight codewords of the original and pre-transformed RM codes respectively, and prove that pre-transformation significantly reduces low-weight codewords, even in the order sense. For polar codes, we prove that the average number of minimum-weight codewords does not increase after pre-transformation. Both results confirm the advantages of pre-transformation.
Reed Muller (RM) codes are known for their good minimum distance. One can use their structure to construct polar-like codes with good distance properties by choosing the information set as the rows of the polarization matrix with the highest Hamming weight, instead of the most reliable synthetic channels. However, the information length options of RM codes are quite limited due to their specific structure. In this work, we present sufficient conditions to increase the information length by at least one bit for some underlying RM codes and in order to obtain pre-transformed polar-like codes with the same minimum distance than lower rate codes. Moreover, our findings are combined with the method presented in [1] to further reduce the number of minimum weight codewords. Numerical results show that the designed codes perform close to the meta-converse bound at short blocklengths and better than the polarized adjusted convolutional polar codes with the same parameters.