Adaptive List Decoder with Flip Operations for Polar Codes

Abstract: Successive cancellation list decoders with flip operations (SCL-Flip) can utilize re-decoding attempts to significantly improve the error-correction performance of polar codes. However, these re-decoding attempts result in extra computation complexity, which thus leads to increased energy consumption and decoding latency to the communication system adopting SCL-Flip decoders. To significantly reduce the computation complexity of current SCL-Flip decoders, we design a new adaptive SCL-Flip (AD-SCLF) decoder, which can be easily implemented based on existing SCL-Flip techniques. Simulation results showed that the AD-SCLF can reduce up to 80.85\% of the computational complexity of a current SCL-Flip decoder at a matched $FER=10^{-3}$. The result implies our decoder can significantly reduce the energy consumption caused by redundant re-decoding attempts from the SCL-Flip decoder.