Improving Decodability of Polar Codes by Adding Noise

This paper presents an online perturbed and directed neural-evolutionary (Online-PDNE) decoding algorithm for polar codes, in which the perturbation noise and online directed neuro-evolutionary noise sequences are sequentially added to the received sequence for re-decoding if the standard polar decoding fails. The new decoding algorithm converts uncorrectable received sequences into error-correcting regions of their decoding space for correct decoding by adding specific noises. To reduce the decoding complexity and delay, the PDNE decoding algorithm and sole neural-evolutionary (SNE) decoding algorithm for polar codes are further proposed, which provide a considerable tradeoff between the decoding performance and complexity by acquiring the neural-evolutionary noise in an offline manner. Numerical results suggest that our proposed decoding algorithms outperform the other conventional decoding algorithms. At high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) region, the Online-PDNE decoding algorithm improves bit error rate (BER) performance by more than four orders of magnitude compared with the conventional simplified successive cancellation (SSC) decoding algorithm. Furthermore, in the mid-high SNR region, the average normalized complexity of the proposed algorithm is almost the same as that of the SSC decoding algorithm, while preserving the decoding performance gain.