Learning to Decode Polar Codes with One-Bit Quantizer

Abstract

A deep learning method for improving the performance of polar belief propagation (BP) decoder equipped with a one-bit quantizer is proposed. The method generalizes the standard polar BP algorithm by assigning weights to the layers of the unfolded factor graph. These weights can be learned autonomously using deep learning techniques. We prove that the improved polar BP decoder has a symmetric structure, so that the weights can be trained by an all-zero codeword rather than an exponential number of codewords. In order to accelerate the training convergence, a layer-based weight assignment scheme is designed, which decreases the amount of trainable weights. Simulation results show that the improved polar BP decoder with a one-bit quantizer outperforms the standard polar BP decoder with a 2-bit quantizer and achieves faster convergence.