A Multi-Gbps Unrolled Hardware List Decoder Systematic Polar Code
Polar codes are a new class of block codes with an explicit construction that provably achieve the capacity of various communications channels, even with the low-complexity successive-cancellation (SC) decoding algorithm. Yet, the more complex successive-cancellation list (SCL) decoding algorithm is gathering more attention lately as it significantly improves the error-correction performance of short- to moderate-length polar codes, especially when they are concatenated with a cyclic redundancy check code. However, as SCL decoding explores several decoding paths, existing hardware implementations tend to be significantly slower than SC-based decoders. In this paper, we show how the unrolling technique, which has already been used in the context of SC decoding, can be adapted to SCL decoding yielding a multi-Gbps SCL-based polar decoder with an error-correction performance that is competitive when compared to an LDPC code of similar length and rate. Post-place-and-route ASIC results for 28 nm CMOS are provided showing that this decoder can sustain a throughput greater than 10 Gbps at 468 MHz with an energy efficiency of 7.25 pJ/bit.
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Giard, P., Balatsoukas Stimming, A. K., Müller, T. C., Burg, A. P., Thibeault, C., & Gross, W. J. (2016). A Multi-Gbps Unrolled Hardware List Decoder Systematic Polar Code. Proceedings of the Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems and Computers, 1194–1198. https://doi.org/10.1109/ACSSC.2016.7869561
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1702.00938
2016
1194
1198
REVIEWED
EPFL
| Event name | Event place | Event date |
Pacific Grove, CA, USA | Nov. 2016 | |