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IEEE Information Theory Workshop (ITW)

Improved Successive Cancellation Decoding of Polar Codes Through Perturbing A Posteriori LLRs

Zhongjun Yang, Li Chen, Kangjian Qin, Xianbin Wang, Huazi Zhang

Published Sep 29, 2025• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

For polar codes, perturbing received information can enhance the error-correction performance of successive cancellation (SC) decoding. This is an effective approach for realizing low-latency yet high decoding performance for long polar codes, since each perturbation-enhanced SC (PSC) decoding can be performed in parallel. This paper provides theoretical insights into the soft information perturbation. It first reveals that the PSC decoding can be equivalently viewed as perturbing the SC decoding a posteriori log-likelihood ratio (LLR) of the information bits. Such a revelation enables us to reduce the perturbation complexity by only targeting the information bits, resulting in an improved PSC (IPSC) decoding. By better utilizing the a posteriori LLRs, a set of possibly erroneous estimations can be formed to be perturbed, further reducing the perturbation complexity. Our simulation results show that, for various codeword lengths, the proposed IPSC decoding can achieve a similar performance as the PSC decoding, while yielding significant perturbation complexity reduction.

DOI
10.1109/itw62417.2025.11240422

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Improved Successive Cancellation Decoding of Long Polar Codes Through Perturbing a Posteriori LLRs and Its Theoretical Insights

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For polar codes, perturbing received information can enhance the successive cancellation (SC) decoding performance. This is an effective approach for realizing low-latency yet high performance for long polar codes, since all the perturbation-enhanced SC (PSC) decoding can be performed in parallel. This paper provides theoretical insights into soft information perturbation, revealing that the PSC decoding can be equivalently interpreted as perturbing thea posteriorilog-likelihood ratios (LLRs) of information bits. Such a revelation leads to the design of an improved PSC (IPSC) decoding that yields a lower perturbation complexity. By better utilizing the decodinga posterioriLLRs, a set of possibly erroneous estimations can be formed and further perturbed, resulting in the proposed hybrid PSC (HPSC) decoding. During each new SC decoding attempt, it takes turns to flip the first erroneous bit by introducing a biased perturbation, while the subsequent erroneous estimations are corrected through random perturbations. Our simulation results validate that, for various codeword lengths and rates, the proposed IPSC decoding can achieve a similar performance as the conventional PSC decoding, but yield a significantly reduced perturbation complexity. With the same number of decoding attempts, the proposed HPSC decoding outperforms several state-of-the-art SC-based decoding, such as the thresholded SC-flip (TSCF) decoding and the dynamic SC-flip (DSCF) decoding.

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Adaptive Perturbation Enhanced SCL Decoder for Polar Codes

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For polar codes, successive cancellation list (SCL) decoding algorithm significantly improves finite-length performance compared to SC decoding. SCL-flip decoding can further enhance the performance but the gain diminishes as code length increases, due to the difficulty in locating the first error bit position. In this work, we introduce an SCL-perturbation decoding algorithm to address this issue. A basic version of the algorithm introduces small random perturbations to the received symbols before each SCL decoding attempt, and exhibits non-diminishing gain at large block lengths. Its enhanced version adaptively performs random perturbations or directional perturbation on each received symbol according to previous decoding results, and managed to correct more errors with fewer decoding attempts. Extensive simulation results demonstrate stable gains across various code rates, lengths and list sizes. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first SCL enhancement with non-diminishing gains as code length increases, and achieves unprecedented efficiency. With only one additional SCL-$L$ decoding attempt (in total two), the proposed algorithm achieves SCL-$2L$-equivalent performance. Since the gain is obtained without increasing list size, the algorithm is best suited for hardware implementation.

arXiv:2407.03555•Jul 4, 2024•0 citations
For polar codes, perturbing received information can enhance the error-correction performance of successive cancellation (SC) decoding. This is an effective approach for realizing low-latency yet high decoding performance for long polar codes, since each perturbation-enhanced SC (PSC) decoding can be performed in parallel. This paper provides theoretical insights into the soft information perturbation. It first reveals that the PSC decoding can be equivalently viewed as perturbing the SC decoding a posteriori log-likelihood ratio (LLR) of the information bits. Such a revelation enables us to reduce the perturbation complexity by only targeting the information bits, resulting in an improved PSC (IPSC) decoding. By better utilizing the a posteriori LLRs, a set of possibly erroneous estimations can be formed to be perturbed, further reducing the perturbation complexity. Our simulation results show that, for various codeword lengths, the proposed IPSC decoding can achieve a similar performance as the PSC decoding, while yielding significant perturbation complexity reduction.
For polar codes, perturbing received information can enhance the successive cancellation (SC) decoding performance. This is an effective approach for realizing low-latency yet high performance for long polar codes, since all the perturbation-enhanced SC (PSC) decoding can be performed in parallel. This paper provides theoretical insights into soft information perturbation, revealing that the PSC decoding can be equivalently interpreted as perturbing thea posteriorilog-likelihood ratios (LLRs) of information bits. Such a revelation leads to the design of an improved PSC (IPSC) decoding that yields a lower perturbation complexity. By better utilizing the decodinga posterioriLLRs, a set of possibly erroneous estimations can be formed and further perturbed, resulting in the proposed hybrid PSC (HPSC) decoding. During each new SC decoding attempt, it takes turns to flip the first erroneous bit by introducing a biased perturbation, while the subsequent erroneous estimations are corrected through random perturbations. Our simulation results validate that, for various codeword lengths and rates, the proposed IPSC decoding can achieve a similar performance as the conventional PSC decoding, but yield a significantly reduced perturbation complexity. With the same number of decoding attempts, the proposed HPSC decoding outperforms several state-of-the-art SC-based decoding, such as the thresholded SC-flip (TSCF) decoding and the dynamic SC-flip (DSCF) decoding.
Soft information perturbations can significantly improve the successive cancellation (SC) decoding performance of polar codes. This is an effective method for realizing low-latency yet high performance for long polar codes, since each perturbation-based SC (PSC) decoding can be performed in parallel. However, little theoretical insight has been revealed so far regarding its work rationale. This paper provides the theoretical analysis of the soft information perturbation. It reveals that PSC decoding improves the SC decoding performance through correcting the erroneous bit estimations, especially the first erroneous bit (FEB). It further validates that perturbing the soft information does not degrade the error-correction capability of SC decoding. Such revelations lead to the design of optimal perturbations that maximizes the FEB correction probability, resulting in an enhanced PSC decoding performance. Based on this, a novel hybrid PSC (HPSC) decoding is proposed. By introducing the random and biased perturbations, the HPSC decoding can better divert from the initial erroneous estimation and converge to the intended one. Our simulation results demonstrate that with the optimal perturbation, the HPSC decoding can achieve a similar performance as the cyclic redundancy check (CRC) aided SC list (CA-SCL) decoding, while avoiding path sorting and expansion.
Soft information perturbation can significantly enhance the successive cancellation list (SCL) decoding performance of polar codes. However, the existing perturbation-based SCL (PSCL) decoding requires a large number of re-decoding attempts, leading to high decoding complexity, and hence limits its application for long polar codes. In this letter, an enhanced PSCL (E-PSCL) decoding is proposed. It utilizes a new biased perturbation strategy that requires a reduced number of redecoding attempts, but yields an advanced decoding performance. To further improve the E-PSCL decoding performance, a reliability metric (RM) is introduced. It can better identify the possibly erroneous positions within the SCL decoding failures. During each decoding attempt, the E-PSCL decoding takes turns to flip these positions. Moreover, for the RM, it is derived from the SCL decoding error probability for which both the frozen bits and the error propagation are considered. Simulation results show that with the same number of decoding attempts, the proposed E-PSCL decoding outperforms the state-of-the-art dynamic SCL flip (D-SCLF) decoding and the conventional PSCL decoding.
Multi-Parallel SCD Polar Coding BEC Polar codes are decoded using successive cancellation (SC) algorithm where likelihood ratios (LRs) for data bits are calculated in a sequential manner, and decisions are made using the calculated LRs.During the decoding of an information bit, the decision results for the predecessor bits are used, and a wrongly decided predecessor bit has negative effect on the accurate calculation of the LR for the information bit being decoded.In SC algorithm, when LR=1, the information bit is decoded as u _i=0, however, such a decision has 50% of chance of being correct.In this paper, we propose improved polar decoders utilizing a number of SC decoders.We consider the case of LR=1, and propose polar decoder structures for the more accurate calculation of the LRs of the successor bits.
A two-part successive syndrome-check decoding of polar codes is proposed with the first part successively refining the received codeword and the second part checking its syndrome. A new formulation of the successive-cancellation (SC) decoding algorithm is presented that allows for successively refining the received codeword by comparing the log-likelihood ratio value of a frozen bit with its predefined value. The syndrome of the refined received codeword is then checked for possible errors. In case there are no errors, the decoding process is terminated. Otherwise, the decoder continues to refine the received code-word. The proposed method is extended to the case of SC list (SCL) decoding by terminating the decoding process when the syndrome of the best candidate in the list indicates no errors. Simulation results show that the proposed method reduces the time-complexity of SC and SCL decoders and their fast variants, especially at high signal-to-noise ratios.
For polar codes, successive cancellation list (SCL) decoding algorithm significantly improves finite-length performance compared to SC decoding. SCL-flip decoding can further enhance the performance but the gain diminishes as code length increases, due to the difficulty in locating the first error bit position. In this work, we introduce an SCL-perturbation decoding algorithm to address this issue. A basic version of the algorithm introduces small random perturbations to the received symbols before each SCL decoding attempt, and exhibits non-diminishing gain at large block lengths. Its enhanced version adaptively performs random perturbations or directional perturbation on each received symbol according to previous decoding results, and managed to correct more errors with fewer decoding attempts. Extensive simulation results demonstrate stable gains across various code rates, lengths and list sizes. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first SCL enhancement with non-diminishing gains as code length increases, and achieves unprecedented efficiency. With only one additional SCL-LLL decoding attempt (in total two), the proposed algorithm achieves SCL-2L2L2L-equivalent performance. Since the gain is obtained without increasing list size, the algorithm is best suited for hardware implementation.