Simplified Decoding of Polar Codes by Identifying Reed-Muller Constituent Codes

The throughput of successive cancellation decoding of polar codes can be improved through simplified decoders that identify specific constituent codes in the decoding tree. The identified codes include rate-0, rate-1, repetition, and single parity-check codes. In this work, constituent codes that belong to the family of first-order Reed-Muller codes, and their sub-codes, are also identified in the decoding tree. Alternative decoding schemes that utilize the structure of Reed-Muller codes are incorporated into successive cancellation decoding. Simulation results show that such an approach can improve both the block error rate performance as well as the decoding latency of polar codes.