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Low-Latency Software Polar Decoders

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Abstract

Polar codes are a new class of capacity-achieving error-correcting codes with low encoding and decoding complexity. Their low-complexity decoding algorithms rendering them attractive for use in software-defined radio applications where computational resources are limited. In this work, we present low-latency software polar decoders that exploit modern processor capabilities. We show how adapting the algorithm at various levels can lead to significant improvements in latency and throughput, yielding polar decoders that are suitable for high-performance software-defined radio applications on modern desktop processors and embedded-platform processors. These proposed decoders have an order of magnitude lower latency and memory footprint compared to state-of-the-art decoders, while maintaining comparable throughput. In addition, we present strategies and results for implementing polar decoders on graphical processing units. Finally, we show that the energy efficiency of the proposed decoders is comparable to state-of-the-art software polar decoders.

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Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank Samuel Gagné of École de technologie supérieure and CMC Microsystems for providing access to the Intel Core i7-4770S processor and NVIDIA Tesla K20c graphical processing unit, respectively. Claude Thibeault is a member of ReSMiQ. Warren J. Gross is a member of ReSMiQ and SYTACom.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, McGill University, Montréal, Québec, Canada

    Pascal Giard, Gabi Sarkis & Warren J. Gross

  2. IMS Lab, Bordeaux-INP, Bordeaux, France

    Camille Leroux

  3. Department of Electrical Engineering, École de Technologie Supérieure, Montréal, Québec, Canada

    Claude Thibeault

Authors
  1. Pascal Giard
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  2. Gabi Sarkis
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  3. Camille Leroux
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  4. Claude Thibeault
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  5. Warren J. Gross
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Correspondence to Pascal Giard.

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Giard, P., Sarkis, G., Leroux, C. et al. Low-Latency Software Polar Decoders. J Sign Process Syst 90, 761–775 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11265-016-1157-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11265-016-1157-y

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