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International Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing Conference (IWCMC)

A Novel Labeling Scheme for Neural Belief Propagation in Polar Codes

Qi Chen, Hao Ju, Yin Xu, Dazhi He, Wenjun Zhang

Published Jun 19, 2023• 6 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Recently, deep learning has been adopted to improve the performance of the belief propagation algorithm in polar codes, namely, the neural belief propagation decoder. By attaching trainable parameters to each edge on a tanner graph, this decoder effectively weakens the effect of short cycles. In this paper, we will show that the decoder can be further improved with our newly-designed labeling scheme. Instead of groundtruth transmitted codewords, our scheme utilizes codewords generated from a high-performance decoder (i.e., noise-aided belief propagation list decoder) to construct loss functions. Besides, to reduce the labeling complexity, the ground-truth transmitted codewords are integrated into the decoder as a list and compared with the other lists with the principle of minimum Euclidean distance. Numerical simulation results demonstrate that the proposed labeling scheme can improve the decoding performance by up to 0.2 dB with the same run time complexity and model size.

DOI
10.1109/iwcmc58020.2023.10182494

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Recently, deep learning has been adopted to improve the performance of the belief propagation algorithm in polar codes, namely, the neural belief propagation decoder. By attaching trainable parameters to each edge on a tanner graph, this decoder effectively weakens the effect of short cycles. In this paper, we will show that the decoder can be further improved with our newly-designed labeling scheme. Instead of groundtruth transmitted codewords, our scheme utilizes codewords generated from a high-performance decoder (i.e., noise-aided belief propagation list decoder) to construct loss functions. Besides, to reduce the labeling complexity, the ground-truth transmitted codewords are integrated into the decoder as a list and compared with the other lists with the principle of minimum Euclidean distance. Numerical simulation results demonstrate that the proposed labeling scheme can improve the decoding performance by up to 0.2 dB with the same run time complexity and model size.
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.
Short block-length polar-like codes showcase exceptional error correction performance (ECP) using sequential decoding or successive cancellation list decoding with a large list size. However, achieving a high level of reliability with these methods involves high-latency decoding. To meet the growing demand for low-latency communication with acceptable complexity, belief propagation (BP) decoding emerges as an attractive option, although its ECP is known to fall short of those high-latency alternatives. In this paper, we propose an enhanced BP decoding approach for polar codes, leveraging reinforcement learning (RL) to optimize the message-passing schedule. Moreover, we investigate the design of the polar code rate profile and corresponding Tanner graph representation to enhance the benefits of RL. Numerical results demonstrate a performance gain of more than 1 dB for polar codes with a length of 128 and a rate of 0.5 compared to conventional BP decoding alone at highEb/N0values, demonstrating the promise of the proposed approach.
A novel deep learning method for improving the belief propagation algorithm is proposed. The method generalizes the standard belief propagation algorithm by assigning weights to the edges of the Tanner graph. These edges are then trained using deep learning techniques. A well-known property of the belief propagation algorithm is the independence of the performance on the transmitted codeword. A crucial property of our new method is that our decoder preserved this property. Furthermore, this property allows us to learn only a single codeword instead of exponential number of codewords. Improvements over the belief propagation algorithm are demonstrated for various high density parity check codes.
A deep learning method for improving the performance of polar belief propagation (BP) decoder equipped with a one-bit quantizer is proposed. The method generalizes the standard polar BP algorithm by assigning weights to the layers of the unfolded factor graph. These weights can be learned autonomously using deep learning techniques. We prove that the improved polar BP decoder has a symmetric structure, so that the weights can be trained by an all-zero codeword rather than an exponential number of codewords. In order to accelerate the training convergence, a layer-based weight assignment scheme is designed, which decreases the amount of trainable weights. Simulation results show that the improved polar BP decoder with a one-bit quantizer outperforms the standard polar BP decoder with a 2-bit quantizer and achieves faster convergence.
Polar codes have become the channel coding scheme for control channel of enhanced mobile broadband in the 5G communication systems. Belief propagation (BP) decoding of polar codes has advantages of low decoding latency and high parallelism but achieves worse bit error ratio (BER) performance compared with the successive cancellation list (SCL) decoding scheme. In this paper, an improved BP list (IBPL) decoding algorithm is proposed with comparable BER performance to SCL algoritm. Firstly, the optimal permuted factor graph is analyzed for polar codes, which improves the performance of the BP decoder without path extension. Furthermore, based on the optimal graph, the bit metric and decoding path metric are proposed to extend and prune the decoding path. The proposed IBPL decoder is focused on not only the permutation of polar codes but also the reliabilities of decoded codewords during each iteration of BP decoding, which has a more accurate decoding path list. The simulation results show that the proposed IBPL decoder improves the BER performance compared with the original BP decoder significantly, and can approach the performance of the SCL decoder at low signal to noise ratio regions.
In this paper, we present a sparse neural network decoder (SNND) of polar codes based on belief propagation (BP) and deep learning. At first, the conventional factor graph of polar BP decoding is converted to the bipartite Tanner graph similar to low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes. Then the Tanner graph is unfolded and translated into the graphical representation of deep neural network (DNN). The complex sum-product algorithm (SPA) is modified to min-sum (MS) approximation with low complexity. We dramatically reduce the number of weight by using single weight to parameterize the networks. Optimized by the training techniques of deep learning, proposed SNND achieves comparative decoding performance of SPA and obtains about 0.5 dB gain over MS decoding on (128,64) and (256,128) codes. Moreover, 60% complexity reduction is achieved and the decoding latency is significantly lower than the conventional polar BP.