Nonbinary I-Polar Coded Modulation

Polar codes were shown to be weak at finite block lengths even under maximum-likelihood (ML) decoding. To enhance polar codes, CRC-aided polar codes were proposed. It has been shown that CRC-aided polar codes under the successive cancellation list (SCL) decoder outperform LDPC codes and turbo codes. Recently, interleaved polar (i-polar) codes were proposed. By using a new bit channel selection algorithm, i-polar codes without CRC were shown to outperform the 5G LDPC codes. However, most research on polar codes focuses on the binary case. In this paper, a new family of nonbinary i-polar codes with random constellation mapping is proposed. A recursive form for calculating the average weight enumerating function (WEF) of the nonbinary i-polar code is derived. With the random constellation mapping, the upper bound on the BLER under ML decoding depends on the WEF of the nonbinary i-polar code. Then a new channel selection algorithm is proposed based on the polarization effect and the BLER upper bound. The algorithm generates a sequence, termed the i-polar sequence (IPS). Simulation results show that the nonbinary i-polar codes with the IPS outperform the 5G LDPC codes.