Near-optimal finite-length scaling for polar codes over large alphabets

Conference Paper

For any prime power q, Mori and Tanaka introduced a family of q-ary polar codes based on q by q Reed-Solomon polarization kernels. For transmission over a q-ary erasure channel, they also derived a closed-form recursion for the erasure probability of each effective channel. In this paper, we use that expression to analyze the finite-length scaling of these codes on q-ary erasure channel with erasure probability ϵ ⋯ (0, 1). Our primary result is that, for any γ > 0 and δ > 0, there is a q0 such that, for all q ≥ q0, the fraction of effective channels with erasure rate at most N-γ is at least 1 - ϵ - O(N-1/2+δ), where N = qn is the blocklength. Since the gap to the channel capacity 1 - ϵ cannot vanish faster than O(N-1/2), this establishes near-optimal finite-length scaling for this family of codes. Our approach can be seen as an extension of a similar analysis for binary polar codes by Mondelli, Hassani, and Urbanke.

Full Text

Duke Authors

Cited Authors

  • Pfister, HD; Urbanke, R

Published Date

  • August 10, 2016

Published In

Volume / Issue

  • 2016-August /

Start / End Page

  • 215 - 219

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

  • 2157-8095

International Standard Book Number 13 (ISBN-13)

  • 9781509018062

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

  • 10.1109/ISIT.2016.7541292

Citation Source

  • Scopus