Convolutional Polar Coded Modulation

Abstract: $2^m$-ary modulation creates $m$ bit channels which are neither independent nor identical, and this causes problems when applying polar coding because polar codes are designed for independent identical channels. Different from the existing multi-level coding (MLC) and bit-interleaved coded modulation (BICM) schemes, this paper provides a convolutional polar coded modulation (CPCM) method that preserves the low-complexity nature of BICM while offering improved spectral efficiency. Numerical results are given to show the good performance of the proposed method.