A Low Latency Decoder Architecture for Short Polar Codes

This paper presents a study on the complexity and performance of a decoder architecture for polar codes, which are relevant in the implementation of the 5G New Radio. Considering the importance of low latency communications in some 5G application scenarios, we propose an architecture based on non-binary belief propagation, as this kind of decoding technique is suited to a high level of parallelization w.r.t. standard decoders for this class of codes. Therefore, this architecture con be considered appropriate for the practical implementation of decoders characterized by low latency since it can achieve gains around 50% in the processing time for short codewords (256 bits).