Stitched Polar Codes

2025-11-24

AI Summary

To address the significant performance degradation of conventional polar codes under rate-matching scenarios, this paper proposes spliced polar codes. The method enhances transmission robustness for low-reliability information bits by structurally inserting redundant bits into codewords, while preserving the original encoding/decoding architecture and computational complexity. Crucially, it innovatively reconstructs the polarization process—improving channel polarization effectiveness without altering the base polarization transform matrix—and enables flexible rate adaptation. Theoretical analysis, leveraging weight spectra and polarization speed, characterizes the underlying performance gain mechanism. Simulation and experimental results demonstrate that, at identical code length and code rate, the proposed scheme achieves a 0.3–0.6 dB SNR gain in bit error rate over standard polar codes, validating its effectiveness and practicality.

Technology Category

• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Neural Spike Coding
• Machine Learning: Feature Construction/Reformulation
• Search and Optimization: Mixed Discrete/Continuous Search

Application Category

• Security and Privacy: Privacy-enhancing technologies
• Search and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Efficiency and scalability of Web search engines
• Responsible Web: Data and user privacy-enhancing technologies for the Web

Abstract

In this paper, we introduce stitched polar codes, a novel generalization of Arıkan's regular polar codes. Our core methodology reconfigures the fundamental polarization process by stitching additional structures to enhance the reliability of less reliable information bits in the original code. This approach preserves the polar transformation structure and maintains the same encoding and decoding complexity. Thanks to the flexible configuration, stitched polar codes consistently outperform regular polar codes, effectively solving the performance degradation issue in rate-matched scenarios. Furthermore, we provide theoretical analysis on the weight spectrum and the polarization speed of stitched polar codes to prove their superiority.

Problem

• Enhancing reliability of less reliable information bits
• Solving performance degradation in rate-matched scenarios
• Maintaining encoding and decoding complexity while improving performance

Innovation

• Stitched polar codes reconfigure polarization process
• Stitching enhances reliability of information bits
• Maintains same encoding and decoding complexity