Polar Codes for Block Fading Channels

Abstract

In this paper, we consider the design of polar codes for block fading channels. The key idea is to treat the fading process as a natural polarization, i.e., the reliability of a symbol in a fading block varies with its fading coefficient. This new viewpoint inspires us to construct polar codes tailored for fading channels by matching code polarization with fading polarization. The resulting codes enjoy an explicit construction, and are shown to provide significant gain with respect to conventional polar BICM schemes and LDPC codes.