Polar Codes with Mixed-Kernels

A generalization of the polar coding scheme called mixed-kernels is introduced. This generalization exploits several homogeneous kernels over alphabets of different sizes. An asymptotic analysis of the proposed scheme shows that its polarization properties are strongly related to the ones of the constituent kernels. Simulation of finite length instances of the scheme indicate their advantages both in error correction performance and complexity compared to the known polar coding structures

Recursive Descriptions of Polar Codes

Polar codes are recursive general concatenated codes. This property motivates a recursive formalization of the known decoding algorithms: Successive Cancellation, Successive Cancellation with Lists and Belief Propagation. Using such description allows an easy development of these algorithms for arbitrary polarizing kernels. Hardware architectures for these decoding algorithms are also described in a recursive way, both for Arikan's standard polar codes and for arbitrary polarizing kernels

Polar Codes and Their Quantum-Domain Counterparts

Arikan's polar codes are capable of achieving the Shannon's capacity at a low encoding and decoding complexity, while inherently supporting rate adaptation. By virtue of these attractive features, polar codes have provided fierce competition to both the turbo as well as the Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) codes, making its way into the 5G New Radio (NR). Realizing the significance of polar codes, in this paper we provide a comprehensive survey of polar codes, highlighting the major milestones achieved in the last decade. Furthermore, we also provide tutorial insights into the polar encoder, decoders as well as the code construction methods. We also extend our discussions to quantum polar codes with an emphasis on the underlying quantum-to-classical isomorphism and the syndrome-based quantum polar codes.Comment: 35 pages, accepted for publication in IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorial