Frozen bits based pruning and early termination for polar decoding

A method for wireless communication, comprising:

• receiving a candidate codeword having a codeword length via a communication channel;
• identifying a decoding hypothesis for decoding the candidate codeword based at least in part on the candidate codeword being encoded using a polar code having a plurality of bit locations, the decoding hypothesis associated with a plurality of information bit locations of the polar code corresponding to a plurality of information bits and a plurality of frozen bit locations of the polar code corresponding to a plurality of frozen bits;
• initiating a decoding process for the candidate codeword, the decoding process being performed according to the codeword length and the decoding hypothesis;
• and
• determining whether to terminate the decoding process as having failed to obtain the plurality of information bits based at least in part on evaluating bit metric information associated with a subset of the plurality of bit locations, the subset of the plurality of bit locations selected from the plurality of frozen bit locations based at least in part on the decoding hypothesis.

An apparatus for wireless communication, comprising:

• a processor;
• memory in electronic communication with the processor;
• and
• instructions stored in the memory and operable, when executed by the processor, to cause the apparatus to:
• receive a candidate codeword via a communication channel;
• identify a decoding hypothesis for decoding the candidate codeword based at least in part on the candidate codeword being encoded using a polar code, the decoding hypothesis associated with a plurality of information bit locations of the polar code corresponding to a plurality of information bits and a plurality of frozen bit locations of the polar code corresponding to a plurality of frozen bits;
• perform a decoding process for the candidate codeword based at least in part on the identified decoding hypothesis, the decoding process comprising, for each frozen bit location of at least a subset of the plurality of frozen bit locations:
• determine frozen bit path metrics for a set of decoding paths based at least in part on bit metrics for the set of decoding paths for the each frozen bit location and preceding ones of the at least the subset of the plurality of frozen bit locations and independent of bit metrics for the plurality of information bit locations, and
• discard a subset of the set of decoding paths based at least in part on comparisons of the frozen bit path metrics for each of the set of decoding paths to a threshold frozen bit path metric;
• and
• determine whether to process the information bits of the candidate codeword based at least in part on a result of the decoding process.

An apparatus for wireless communication, comprising:

• a processor;
• memory in electronic communication with the processor;
• and
• instructions stored in the memory and operable, when executed by the processor, to cause the apparatus to:
• receive a candidate codeword having a codeword length via a communication channel;
• identify a decoding hypothesis for decoding the candidate codeword based at least in part on the candidate codeword being encoded using a polar code having a plurality of bit locations, the decoding hypothesis associated with a plurality of information bit locations of the polar code corresponding to a plurality of information bits and a plurality of frozen bit locations of the polar code corresponding to a plurality of frozen bits;
• initiate a decoding process for the candidate codeword, the decoding process being performed according to the codeword length and the decoding hypothesis;
• and
• determine whether to terminate the decoding process as having failed to obtain the plurality of information bits based at least in part on evaluating bit metric information associated with a subset of the plurality of bit locations, the subset of the plurality of bit locations selected from the plurality of frozen bit locations based at least in part on the decoding hypothesis.