Investigation of Polar Codes in Fifth Generation New Radio Control Channels

The key design principle for the control channels is robustness, as the information within the control channels defines how the physical data channels are established and used. Fifth Generation New Radio (5G NR) Physical Downlink Control Channel (PDCCH) achieves this robustness with the Polar Codes. The objective of this study is to investigate the Polar Codes in PDCCH and simulate their effectiveness as a channel coding scheme in various channel scenarios. First, PDCCH channel coding and decoding is discussed, then mapping of the encoded data on the physical resources is given. The Bit Error Rate (BER) performance of the PDCCH Polar Codes is simulated and evaluated in various Tapped Delay Line (TDL) multipath channel scenarios. The results show that Downlink Control Information (DCI) is successfully decoded and robustness is achieved.