Joint detection and decoding for MIMO systems with polar codes

As well known, the near-optimal K-best detection is popular in multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) systems. In this paper, we first propose the joint approaches of K-best detection and polar decoding. For joint detection and decoding (JDD) approach, both hard and soft decisions are considered. The simplified successive cancellation (SSC) decoding is exploited for hard decision, and the successive cancellation list (SCL) decoding is used as soft decision. The system setup for JDD is als o introduced, in which the modulation points across several channels are considered together. Simulation results have demonstrated the performance advantage of the JDD algorithms over the separated ones. For 1/2-rate polar codes, JDD schemes show 50% complexity reduction compared to the separated ones. Furthermore, by employing SSC hard decoding, the JDD algorithm is promising for high-throughput and low-complexity application s.