A Search Method for Large Polarization Kernels

Abstract: A new search method for large polarization kernels is proposed. The algorithm produces a kernel with given partial distances by employing depth-first search combined with some methods which reduce the search space. Using the proposed method, we improved almost all existing lower bounds on the maximum rate of polarization for kernels of size from 17 to 27. We also obtained kernels which admit low complexity processing by the recently proposed recursive trellis algorithm. Numerical results demonstrate the advantage of polar codes with the proposed kernels compared with shortened polar codes and polar codes with small kernels.