Warren Gross

Practical Dynamic SC-Flip Polar Decoders: Algorithm and Implementation

Furkan Ercan

Thibaud Tonnellier

Nghia Doan

SC-Flip (SCF) is a low-complexity polar code decoding algorithm with improved performance, and is an alternative to high-complexity (CRC)-ai… (see more)ded SC-List (CA-SCL) decoding. However, the performance improvement of SCF is limited since it can correct up to only one channel error (

2020-09-17

ArXiv (preprint)

Practical Dynamic SC-Flip Polar Decoders: Algorithm and Implementation

Furkan Ercan

Thibaud Tonnellier

Nghia Doan

SC-Flip (SCF) is a low-complexity polar code decoding algorithm with improved performance, and is an alternative to high-complexity (CRC)-ai… (see more)ded SC-List (CA-SCL) decoding. However, the performance improvement of SCF is limited since it can correct up to only one channel error (

2020-01-01

IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing (published)

Stochastic Bit-Wise Iterative Decoding of Polar Codes

Kaining Han

Junchao Wang

Jianhao Hu

Polar codes have received recent attention due to their potential to be applied in advanced wireless communication protocols such as the fif… (see more)th generation mobile communication system (5G). Among the existing decoding algorithms, Belief Propagation (BP) exhibits high-throughput, low-latency, and soft output with a high hardware cost. Stochastic computing, as a form of approximate computing, provides a potential low-cost implementation solution for the BP algorithm. However, existing stochastic BP decoders suffer from a relatively long decoding latency resulting in low hardware efficiency. In this paper, a novel bit-wise iterative stochastic decoding architecture for the BP algorithm is proposed to improve the throughput and hardware efficiency. By utilizing the frozen bits of polar codes and stochastic computing, multiple novel optimization methods are presented to further speed up convergence and increase the hardware efficiency.

2019-03-01

IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing (published)

Stochastic Bit-Wise Iterative Decoding of Polar Codes

Kaining Han

Junchao Wang

Jianhao Hu

Polar codes have received recent attention due to their potential to be applied in advanced wireless communication protocols such as the fif… (see more)th generation mobile communication system (5G). Among the existing decoding algorithms, Belief Propagation (BP) exhibits high-throughput, low-latency, and soft output with a high hardware cost. Stochastic computing, as a form of approximate computing, provides a potential low-cost implementation solution for the BP algorithm. However, existing stochastic BP decoders suffer from a relatively long decoding latency resulting in low hardware efficiency. In this paper, a novel bit-wise iterative stochastic decoding architecture for the BP algorithm is proposed to improve the throughput and hardware efficiency. By utilizing the frozen bits of polar codes and stochastic computing, multiple novel optimization methods are presented to further speed up convergence and increase the hardware efficiency.

2019-03-01

IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing (published)

Fast and Flexible Successive-Cancellation List Decoders for Polar Codes

Seyyed Ali Hashemi

Carlo Condo

Polar codes have gained significant amount of attention during the past few years and have been selected as a coding scheme for the next gen… (see more)eration of mobile broadband standard. Among decoding schemes, successive-cancellation list (SCL) decoding provides a reasonable tradeoff between the error-correction performance and hardware implementation complexity when used to decode polar codes, at the cost of limited throughput. The simplified SCL (SSCL) and its extension SSCL-SPC increase the speed of decoding by removing redundant calculations when encountering particular information and frozen bit patterns (rate one and single parity check codes), while keeping the error-correction performance unaltered. In this paper, we improve SSCL and SSCL-SPC by proving that the list size imposes a specific number of path splitting required to decode rate one and single parity check codes. Thus, the number of splitting can be limited while guaranteeing exactly the same error-correction performance as if the paths were forked at each bit estimation. We call the new decoding algorithms Fast-SSCL and Fast-SSCL-SPC. Moreover, we show that the number of path forks in a practical application can be tuned to achieve desirable speed, while keeping the error-correction performance almost unchanged. Hardware architectures implementing both algorithms are then described and implemented: It is shown that our design can achieve

2017-11-01

IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing (published)

Implementation of Sparse Superposition Codes

Carlo Condo

Sparse superposition codes (SSCs) are capacity achieving codes whose decoding process is a linear sensing problem. Decoding approaches thus … (see more)exploit the approximate message passing algorithm, which has been proven to be effective in compressing sensing. Previous work from the authors has evaluated the error correction performance of SSCs under finite precision and finite code length. This paper proposes the first SSC encoder and decoder architectures in the literature. The architectures are parametrized and applicable to all SSCs: A set of wide-ranging case studies is then considered, and code-specific approximations, along with implementation results in 65 nm CMOS technology, are then provided. The encoding process can be carried out with low power consumption (≤2.103 mW), while the semi-parallel decoder architecture can reach a throughput of 1.3 Gb/s with a 768 × 6-bit SSC codeword and an area occupation of 2.43 mm2.

2017-05-01

IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing (published)

Implementation of Sparse Superposition Codes

Carlo Condo

Sparse superposition codes (SSCs) are capacity achieving codes whose decoding process is a linear sensing problem. Decoding approaches thus … (see more)exploit the approximate message passing algorithm, which has been proven to be effective in compressing sensing. Previous work from the authors has evaluated the error correction performance of SSCs under finite precision and finite code length. This paper proposes the first SSC encoder and decoder architectures in the literature. The architectures are parametrized and applicable to all SSCs: A set of wide-ranging case studies is then considered, and code-specific approximations, along with implementation results in 65 nm CMOS technology, are then provided. The encoding process can be carried out with low power consumption (

2017-05-01

IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing (published)

Fast and Flexible Successive-Cancellation List Decoders for Polar Codes

Seyyed Ali Hashemi

Carlo Condo

Polar codes have gained significant amount of attention during the past few years and have been selected as a coding scheme for the next gen… (see more)eration of mobile broadband standard. Among decoding schemes, successive-cancellation list (SCL) decoding provides a reasonable tradeoff between the error-correction performance and hardware implementation complexity when used to decode polar codes, at the cost of limited throughput. The simplified SCL (SSCL) and its extension SSCL-SPC increase the speed of decoding by removing redundant calculations when encountering particular information and frozen bit patterns (rate one and single parity check codes), while keeping the error-correction performance unaltered. In this paper, we improve SSCL and SSCL-SPC by proving that the list size imposes a specific number of path splitting required to decode rate one and single parity check codes. Thus, the number of splitting can be limited while guaranteeing exactly the same error-correction performance as if the paths were forked at each bit estimation. We call the new decoding algorithms Fast-SSCL and Fast-SSCL-SPC. Moreover, we show that the number of path forks in a practical application can be tuned to achieve desirable speed, while keeping the error-correction performance almost unchanged. Hardware architectures implementing both algorithms are then described and implemented: It is shown that our design can achieve

2017-03-23

ArXiv (preprint)

Fault-Tolerant Associative Memories Based on $c$-Partite Graphs

François Leduc-Primeau

Vincent Gripon

Michael Rabbat

Associative memories allow the retrieval of previously stored messages given a part of their content. In this paper, we are interested in as… (see more)sociative memories based on c-partite graphs that were recently introduced. These memories are almost optimal in terms of the amount of storage they require (efficiency) and allow retrieving messages with low complexity. We propose a generic implementation model for the retrieval algorithm that can be readily mapped to an integrated circuit and study the retrieval performance when hardware components are affected by faults. We show using analytical and simulation results that these associative memories can be made resilient to circuit faults with a minor modification of the retrieval algorithm. In one example, the memory retains 88% of its efficiency when 1% of the storage cells are faulty, or 98% when 0.1% of the binary outputs of the retrieval algorithm are faulty. When considering storage faults, the fault tolerance exhibited by the proposed associative memory can be comparable to using a capacity-achieving error correction code for protecting the stored information.

2016-02-15

IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing (published)

Fault-Tolerant Associative Memories Based on $c$-Partite Graphs

François Leduc-Primeau

Vincent Gripon

Michael Rabbat

Associative memories allow the retrieval of previously stored messages given a part of their content. In this paper, we are interested in as… (see more)sociative memories based on c-partite graphs that were recently introduced. These memories are almost optimal in terms of the amount of storage they require (efficiency) and allow retrieving messages with low complexity. We propose a generic implementation model for the retrieval algorithm that can be readily mapped to an integrated circuit and study the retrieval performance when hardware components are affected by faults. We show using analytical and simulation results that these associative memories can be made resilient to circuit faults with a minor modification of the retrieval algorithm. In one example, the memory retains 88% of its efficiency when 1% of the storage cells are faulty, or 98% when 0.1% of the binary outputs of the retrieval algorithm are faulty. When considering storage faults, the fault tolerance exhibited by the proposed associative memory can be comparable to using a capacity-achieving error correction code for protecting the stored information.

2016-02-01

IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing (published)

A Scalable Successive-Cancellation Decoder for Polar Codes

Alexandre J. Raymond

Polar codes are the first error-correcting codes to provably achieve channel capacity, asymptotically in code length, with an explicit const… (see more)ruction. However, under successive-cancellation decoding, polar codes require very long code lengths to compete with existing modern codes. Nonetheless, the successive cancellation algorithm enables very-low-complexity implementations in hardware, due to the regular structure exhibited by polar codes. In this paper, we present an improved architecture for successive-cancellation decoding of polar codes, making use of a novel semi-parallel, encoder-based partial-sum computation module. We also provide quantization results for realistic code length N=215, and explore various optimization techniques such as a chained processing element and a variable quantization scheme. This design is shown to scale to code lengths of up to N=221, enabled by its low logic use, low register use and simple datapaths, limited almost exclusively by the amount of available SRAM. It also supports an overlapped loading of frames, allowing full-throughput decoding with a single set of input buffers.

2014-10-15

IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing (published)