Blind Estimation of Polar Encoder Parameters

Forward error correction (FEC) codes are widely used to correct the errors in the transmitted data and it improves the reliability of the digital transmission. In a practical communication system, accurate information about the channel coding technique is required at the receiver side. However, in certain applications and future generation communication systems, it is mandatory to propose automatic code recognition techniques at the receiver in order to successfully decode the received information signals. In this paper, we propose two algorithms for blind estimation of codeword length and code dimension of polar codes, which are included as codes for the control channels in the fifth generation (5G) wireless standard. The two algorithms work in a sequence, where the first algorithm will estimate the value of codeword length and the second algorithm will estimate the value of code dimension. The proposed algorithms are compared with the existing algorithms in the literature in terms of accuracy of estimation of code parameters. The results of the comparative analysis and the test case results based on the proposed algorithms are reported.