Repository logo

Infoscience

  • English
  • French
Log In
Logo EPFL, École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne

Infoscience

  • English
  • French
Log In
  1. Home
  2. Academic and Research Output
  3. Journal articles
  4. PolarBear: A 28-nm FD-SOI ASIC for Decoding of Polar Codes
 
research article

PolarBear: A 28-nm FD-SOI ASIC for Decoding of Polar Codes

Giard, Pascal  
•
Balatsoukas Stimming, Alexios Konstantinos  
•
Müller, Thomas Christoph  
Show more
2017
IEEE Journal on Emerging and Selected Topics in Circuits and Systems

Polar codes are a recently proposed class of block codes that provably achieve the capacity of various communication channels. They received a lot of attention as they can do so with low-complexity encoding and decoding algorithms, and they have an explicit construction. Their recent inclusion in a 5G communication standard will only spur more research. However, only a couple of ASICs featuring decoders for polar codes were fabricated, and none of them implements a list-based decoding algorithm. In this paper, we present ASIC measurement results for a fabricated 28 nm CMOS chip that implements two different decoders: the first decoder is tailored toward error-correction performance and flexibility. It supports any code rate as well as three different decoding algorithms: successive cancellation (SC), SC flip and SC list (SCL). The flexible decoder can also decode both non-systematic and systematic polar codes. The second decoder targets speed and energy efficiency. We present measurement results for the first silicon-proven SCL decoder, where its coded throughput is shown to be of 306.8 Mbps with a latency of 3.34 us and an energy per bit of 418.3 pJ/bit at a clock frequency of 721 MHz for a supply of 1.3 V. The energy per bit drops down to 178.1 pJ/bit with a more modest clock frequency of 308 MHz, lower throughput of 130.9 Mbps and a reduced supply voltage of 0.9 V. For the other two operating modes, the energy per bit is shown to be of approximately 95 pJ/bit. The less flexible high-throughput unrolled decoder can achieve a coded throughput of 9.2 Gbps and a latency of 628 ns for a measured energy per bit of 1.15 pJ/bit at 451 MHz.

  • Details
  • Metrics
Type
research article
DOI
10.1109/JETCAS.2017.2745704
Web of Science ID

WOS:000418645500013

ArXiv ID

1708.09603

Author(s)
Giard, Pascal  
Balatsoukas Stimming, Alexios Konstantinos  
Müller, Thomas Christoph  
Bonetti, Andrea  
Thibeault, Claude
Gross, Warren J.
Flatresse, Philippe
Burg, Andreas Peter  
Date Issued

2017

Published in
IEEE Journal on Emerging and Selected Topics in Circuits and Systems
Volume

7

Issue

4

Start page

616

End page

629

Subjects

Polar codes

•

ASIC

•

successive cancellation

•

SC flip

•

SC list

Editorial or Peer reviewed

REVIEWED

Written at

EPFL

EPFL units
TCL  
Available on Infoscience
September 8, 2017
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/140560
Logo EPFL, École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne
  • Contact
  • infoscience@epfl.ch

  • Follow us on Facebook
  • Follow us on Instagram
  • Follow us on LinkedIn
  • Follow us on X
  • Follow us on Youtube
AccessibilityLegal noticePrivacy policyCookie settingsEnd User AgreementGet helpFeedback

Infoscience is a service managed and provided by the Library and IT Services of EPFL. © EPFL, tous droits réservés