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

IEEE Communications Letters

An Efficient Belief Propagation List Flip Decoder for Polar Codes

Chen Wang, Xiaofu Wu, Wu Wei, Suofei Zhang, Gengxin Zhang

Published Jul 4, 2023• 7 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Recently, belief propagation list (BPL) decoding has been proposed to achieve the excellent parallel decoding performance of polar codes with high throughput and low latency. However, the performance gap between BPL decoding and state-of-the-art successive cancellation list (SCL) decoding is still significant at practical SNRs. In this letter, we propose an efficient BPL flip (EBPLF) decoding algorithm for filling this gap. Firstly, an efficient bit-flipping strategy under BPL decoding is proposed to allow multiple bits being flipped more efficiently than the existing bit-flipping strategy. Then, by exploiting the decoding diversity and reliability of each bit over the multiple factor graphs within BPL decoding, an enhanced flip set is constructed to identify the error-prone patterns in an efficient way. Extensive simulation results show that EBPLF decoding outperforms the existing BPLF scheme and approaches the performance of adaptive SCL decoding at practical SNRs with much lower average latency.

DOI
10.1109/lcomm.2023.3292268

Related papers

An Optimized Belief Propagation List Decoding for Polar Codes with Dynamic Flipping

Yinyou Mao, Wenxue Tan, Jianying Li +1 more

In the context of polar codes, belief propagation list (BPL) decoding has demonstrated a substantial enhancement in parallel decoding performance, achieving high throughput.Nevertheless, a performance gap still exists between the advanced BPL decoding and successive cancellation list (SCL) decoding methods.Moreover, existing bit-flipping strategies are inefficient in accurately identifying erroneous bit positions, leading to elevated computational complexity and limiting their practical applicability.This study introduces an optimized BPL decoding algorithm with dynamic flipping (OBPL-DF) aimed at bridging this performance gap while reducing computational demands.Initially, an efficient decoding scheme is proposed to further decrease computational complexity in practical scenarios.Subsequently, to improve the precision of error position detection, a partial cyclic redundancy check (CRC) code is employed on erroneous codewords.Finally, a dynamic flipping metric is developed within the bit-flipping strategy, allowing the selection of flipped positions to be guided by this novel metric rather than being confined to a predetermined set.Simulation results demonstrate that the OBPL-DF algorithm surpasses the performance of existing BPL flip (BPLF) decoding techniques and approaches that of enhanced SCL decoding, all while achieving significantly lower latency.

Tehnicki vjesnik - Technical Gazette•Mar 1, 2026•0 citations

Belief Propagation List Decoding of Polar Codes

Ahmed Elkelesh, Moustafa Ebada, Sebastian Cammerer +1 more

We propose a belief propagation list (BPL) decoder with comparable performance to the successive cancellation list (SCL) decoder of polar codes, which already achieves the maximum likelihood (ML) bound of polar codes for sufficiently large list size L. The proposed decoder is composed of multiple parallel independent belief propagation (BP) decoders based on differently permuted polar code factor graphs. A list of possible transmitted codewords is generated and the one closest to the received vector, in terms of Euclidean distance, is picked. To the best of our knowledge, the proposed BPL decoder provides the best performance of plain polar codes under iterative decoding known so far. The proposed algorithm does not require any changes in the polar code structure itself, rendering the BPL into an alternative to the SCL decoder, equipped with a soft output capability enabling, e.g., iterative detection and decoding to further improve performance. Further benefits are the lower decoding latency than the SCL decoder and the possibility of high throughput implementations. Additionally, we show that a different selection strategy of frozen bit positions can further enhance the error-rate performance of the proposed decoder.

arXiv:1806.10503•IEEE Communications Letters•Jun 26, 2018•161 citations

Improved segmented belief propagation list decoding for polar codes with bit-flipping

Mao Yinyou, Yang Dong, Liu Xingcheng +1 more

Belief propagation list (BPL) decoding for polar codes has attracted more attention due to its inherent parallel nature. However, a large gap still exists with CRC-aided SCL (CA-SCL) decoding. In this work, an improved segmented belief propagation list decoding based on bit flipping (SBPL-BF) is proposed. On the one hand, the proposed algorithm makes use of the cooperative characteristic in BPL decoding such that the codeword is decoded in different BP decoders. Based on this characteristic, the unreliable bits for flipping could be split into multiple subblocks and could be flipped in different decoders simultaneously. On the other hand, a more flexible and effective processing strategy for the priori information of the unfrozen bits that do not need to be flipped is designed to improve the decoding convergence. In addition, this is the first proposal in BPL decoding which jointly optimizes the bit flipping of the information bits and the code bits. In particular, for bit flipping of the code bits, a H-matrix aided bit-flipping algorithm is designed to enhance the accuracy in identifying erroneous code bits. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm significantly improves the error-correction performance of BPL decoding for medium and long codes. It is more than 0.25 dB better than the state-of-the-art BPL decoding at a block error rate (BLER) of 10−5, and outperforms CA-SCL decoding in the low signal-to-noise (SNR) region for (1024,0.5) polar codes.

China Communications•Mar 1, 2024•1 citation

An Improved Belief Propagation Bit-Flipping Decoder for Polar Codes

Mengqing Zhao, Daqin Peng

Bit flipping was first used to improve the decoding performance of successive cancellation (SC) decoder. Since SC decoding process is serial, so the first bit that goes wrong in the decoding process will cause several subsequent bits to go wrong, which will suffer from higher decoding delay than belief propagation (BP) parallel decoding. In order to meet the performance of 5G low latency and high reliability, BP decoding algorithm have received a lot of attention. However, at medium and high signal-to-noise ratios (SNR), BP decoding does not perform as well as the SC list (SCL) decoding algorithm. Hence, BP decoding algorithm borrows bit-flip strategies from SC bit flip (SCF) decoder to improve the performance. The performance of BP bit flip (BPF) decoding depends on whether the construction of the flip set is correct, so this letter proposes a flip set construction approach based on the standard deviation of the log-likelihood ratio (LLR) and the reliability weight of polarized channels, which is comparable to the existing BPF decoding, the improved algorithm can identify the error-prone bits more efficiently and improve the decoding performance.

International Conference on Intelligent Computing and Signal Processing (ICSP)•Apr 21, 2023•2 citations

Improved Belief Propagation Polar Decoders With Bit-Flipping Algorithms

Yifei Shen, Wenqing Song, Houren Ji +4 more

Since the inherent serial nature of successive cancellation list (SCL) decoding results in a long latency, belief propagation (BP) decoding for polar codes has drawn attention for high-throughput applications. However, its error correction performance is inferior to that of SCL decoding. Therefore, the bit-flipping strategy has been recently applied to BP decoding, which can approach the SCL decoding performance through multiple additional decoding attempts. The original BP flip (BPF) decoding suffers from an inaccurate identification of erroneous bits by a fixed flip set (FS), which has been improved by the generalized BPF (GBPF) decoding. In this article, the GBPF decoding is extended to support multiple bits being flipped in one decoding attempt. In addition, for two types of decoding errors: detected errors and undetected errors, we propose two novel methods to more effectively identify erroneous bits. For detected errors, the concept of loop sets is defined and a loopbased identification method is introduced based on the study of error patterns of BP decoding. On the other hand, a method to generate a more accurate fixed FS is proposed for undetected errors, which considers the bit error distribution under BP decoding. Combining the two methods, the GBPF with merged sets (GBPF-MS) decoding can achieve the SCL-8 performance and outperforms the state-of-the-art BPF, BP list, and SC flip (SCF) decoding, for polar codes with length 1024 and information rate 1/2. Implemented by 40nm CMOS technology, the proposed GBPF-MS decoder with ten flips exhibits an average throughput of 4.19 Gbps at 2.5 dB, which is 1.6× and 1.72× faster than the state-of-the-art SCL-4 and SCF decoders, respectively.

IEEE Transactions on Communications•Aug 18, 2020•38 citations

An Enhanced Belief Propagation Decoder for Polar Codes

Meng Zhang, Zhuo Li, Lijuan Xing

Belief propagation (BP) has attracted increasing attention due to its high parallelism. In this letter, a correction method is proposed to improve the block error rate (BLER) performance of the BP decoder for polar codes so that it is comparable to that of the successive cancellation list (SCL) decoder. Compared with BP flipping (BPF) decoding, the proposed decoder focuses on prior knowledge of the code bits in the factor graph. Two strategies have been proposed to construct the correction set. The simulation results show that the BPC decoder exhibits a BLER similar to that of BPF decoder while reducing the average latency and complexity by half. In addition, the BLER of the BPC decoder can approach that of the cyclic redundancy check (CRC)-aided SCL (CA-SCL) decoder in regions with low and medium signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs).

IEEE Communications Letters•Aug 11, 2021•16 citations
Recently, belief propagation list (BPL) decoding has been proposed to achieve the excellent parallel decoding performance of polar codes with high throughput and low latency. However, the performance gap between BPL decoding and state-of-the-art successive cancellation list (SCL) decoding is still significant at practical SNRs. In this letter, we propose an efficient BPL flip (EBPLF) decoding algorithm for filling this gap. Firstly, an efficient bit-flipping strategy under BPL decoding is proposed to allow multiple bits being flipped more efficiently than the existing bit-flipping strategy. Then, by exploiting the decoding diversity and reliability of each bit over the multiple factor graphs within BPL decoding, an enhanced flip set is constructed to identify the error-prone patterns in an efficient way. Extensive simulation results show that EBPLF decoding outperforms the existing BPLF scheme and approaches the performance of adaptive SCL decoding at practical SNRs with much lower average latency.
In the context of polar codes, belief propagation list (BPL) decoding has demonstrated a substantial enhancement in parallel decoding performance, achieving high throughput.Nevertheless, a performance gap still exists between the advanced BPL decoding and successive cancellation list (SCL) decoding methods.Moreover, existing bit-flipping strategies are inefficient in accurately identifying erroneous bit positions, leading to elevated computational complexity and limiting their practical applicability.This study introduces an optimized BPL decoding algorithm with dynamic flipping (OBPL-DF) aimed at bridging this performance gap while reducing computational demands.Initially, an efficient decoding scheme is proposed to further decrease computational complexity in practical scenarios.Subsequently, to improve the precision of error position detection, a partial cyclic redundancy check (CRC) code is employed on erroneous codewords.Finally, a dynamic flipping metric is developed within the bit-flipping strategy, allowing the selection of flipped positions to be guided by this novel metric rather than being confined to a predetermined set.Simulation results demonstrate that the OBPL-DF algorithm surpasses the performance of existing BPL flip (BPLF) decoding techniques and approaches that of enhanced SCL decoding, all while achieving significantly lower latency.
We propose a belief propagation list (BPL) decoder with comparable performance to the successive cancellation list (SCL) decoder of polar codes, which already achieves the maximum likelihood (ML) bound of polar codes for sufficiently large list size L. The proposed decoder is composed of multiple parallel independent belief propagation (BP) decoders based on differently permuted polar code factor graphs. A list of possible transmitted codewords is generated and the one closest to the received vector, in terms of Euclidean distance, is picked. To the best of our knowledge, the proposed BPL decoder provides the best performance of plain polar codes under iterative decoding known so far. The proposed algorithm does not require any changes in the polar code structure itself, rendering the BPL into an alternative to the SCL decoder, equipped with a soft output capability enabling, e.g., iterative detection and decoding to further improve performance. Further benefits are the lower decoding latency than the SCL decoder and the possibility of high throughput implementations. Additionally, we show that a different selection strategy of frozen bit positions can further enhance the error-rate performance of the proposed decoder.
Belief propagation list (BPL) decoding for polar codes has attracted more attention due to its inherent parallel nature. However, a large gap still exists with CRC-aided SCL (CA-SCL) decoding. In this work, an improved segmented belief propagation list decoding based on bit flipping (SBPL-BF) is proposed. On the one hand, the proposed algorithm makes use of the cooperative characteristic in BPL decoding such that the codeword is decoded in different BP decoders. Based on this characteristic, the unreliable bits for flipping could be split into multiple subblocks and could be flipped in different decoders simultaneously. On the other hand, a more flexible and effective processing strategy for the priori information of the unfrozen bits that do not need to be flipped is designed to improve the decoding convergence. In addition, this is the first proposal in BPL decoding which jointly optimizes the bit flipping of the information bits and the code bits. In particular, for bit flipping of the code bits, a H-matrix aided bit-flipping algorithm is designed to enhance the accuracy in identifying erroneous code bits. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm significantly improves the error-correction performance of BPL decoding for medium and long codes. It is more than 0.25 dB better than the state-of-the-art BPL decoding at a block error rate (BLER) of 10−5, and outperforms CA-SCL decoding in the low signal-to-noise (SNR) region for (1024,0.5) polar codes.
Bit flipping was first used to improve the decoding performance of successive cancellation (SC) decoder. Since SC decoding process is serial, so the first bit that goes wrong in the decoding process will cause several subsequent bits to go wrong, which will suffer from higher decoding delay than belief propagation (BP) parallel decoding. In order to meet the performance of 5G low latency and high reliability, BP decoding algorithm have received a lot of attention. However, at medium and high signal-to-noise ratios (SNR), BP decoding does not perform as well as the SC list (SCL) decoding algorithm. Hence, BP decoding algorithm borrows bit-flip strategies from SC bit flip (SCF) decoder to improve the performance. The performance of BP bit flip (BPF) decoding depends on whether the construction of the flip set is correct, so this letter proposes a flip set construction approach based on the standard deviation of the log-likelihood ratio (LLR) and the reliability weight of polarized channels, which is comparable to the existing BPF decoding, the improved algorithm can identify the error-prone bits more efficiently and improve the decoding performance.
Since the inherent serial nature of successive cancellation list (SCL) decoding results in a long latency, belief propagation (BP) decoding for polar codes has drawn attention for high-throughput applications. However, its error correction performance is inferior to that of SCL decoding. Therefore, the bit-flipping strategy has been recently applied to BP decoding, which can approach the SCL decoding performance through multiple additional decoding attempts. The original BP flip (BPF) decoding suffers from an inaccurate identification of erroneous bits by a fixed flip set (FS), which has been improved by the generalized BPF (GBPF) decoding. In this article, the GBPF decoding is extended to support multiple bits being flipped in one decoding attempt. In addition, for two types of decoding errors: detected errors and undetected errors, we propose two novel methods to more effectively identify erroneous bits. For detected errors, the concept of loop sets is defined and a loopbased identification method is introduced based on the study of error patterns of BP decoding. On the other hand, a method to generate a more accurate fixed FS is proposed for undetected errors, which considers the bit error distribution under BP decoding. Combining the two methods, the GBPF with merged sets (GBPF-MS) decoding can achieve the SCL-8 performance and outperforms the state-of-the-art BPF, BP list, and SC flip (SCF) decoding, for polar codes with length 1024 and information rate 1/2. Implemented by 40nm CMOS technology, the proposed GBPF-MS decoder with ten flips exhibits an average throughput of 4.19 Gbps at 2.5 dB, which is 1.6× and 1.72× faster than the state-of-the-art SCL-4 and SCF decoders, respectively.
Belief propagation (BP) has attracted increasing attention due to its high parallelism. In this letter, a correction method is proposed to improve the block error rate (BLER) performance of the BP decoder for polar codes so that it is comparable to that of the successive cancellation list (SCL) decoder. Compared with BP flipping (BPF) decoding, the proposed decoder focuses on prior knowledge of the code bits in the factor graph. Two strategies have been proposed to construct the correction set. The simulation results show that the BPC decoder exhibits a BLER similar to that of BPF decoder while reducing the average latency and complexity by half. In addition, the BLER of the BPC decoder can approach that of the cyclic redundancy check (CRC)-aided SCL (CA-SCL) decoder in regions with low and medium signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs).