On error correction performance of LDPC and Polar codes for the 5G Machine Type Communications

Channel coding for the 5th generation (5G) wireless communication system has to fulfill diverse requirements arising from new machine type communication (MTC) services. The 5G-MTC applications can be classified into two categories: Ultra-Reliable Low-Latency Communications (URLLC) and massive Machine-Type Communication (mMTC). Polar code and Low-Density Parity Check (LDPC) code are among the most advanced channel coding techniques known today that have the potential to be used in the 5G. The main objective of this paper is to evaluate the error correction performance of Polar and LDPC coding schemes in the case when short to medium information block lengths are transmitted, as it is often in mMTC and URLLC scenarios. These codes are evaluated in terms of both Block Error Rate (BLER) and Bit Error Rate (BER). Simulation results show that Polar codes exhibit a much better error correction capability compared to the LDPC codes for short block lengths, while they have a comparable performance at medium block length.