阅读说明：本技术 极化编码和解码 (Polarization encoding and decoding ) 是由 陈宇 朱凯 于 2018-07-20 设计创作，主要内容包括：本公开的实施例提供了用于执行极化编码或解码的方法、设备和计算机可读介质。在一种用于通信的方法中,包括按照初始顺序的多个信息比特的初始序列被生成；多个信息比特的至少一个附加序列通过改变初始顺序被生成,以使得在初始序列和附加序列的极化编码之后,多个信息比特的可靠性方差小于预定值；初始序列和附加序列使用极化码被编码；以及经编码的初始序列和经编码的附加序列被传输给接收设备。本公开的实施例改进了极化编码和解码的性能。(Embodiments of the present disclosure provide methods, apparatuses, and computer-readable media for performing polarization encoding or decoding. In a method for communication, an initial sequence comprising a plurality of information bits in an initial order is generated; at least one additional sequence of the plurality of information bits is generated by changing the initial order such that a reliability variance of the plurality of information bits is less than a predetermined value after polarization encoding of the initial sequence and the additional sequence; the initial sequence and the additional sequence are encoded using a polar code; and the encoded initial sequence and the encoded additional sequence are transmitted to a receiving device. Embodiments of the present disclosure improve the performance of polar encoding and decoding.)

1. A method for communication, comprising:

generating an initial sequence including a plurality of information bits in an initial order;

generating at least one additional sequence of the plurality of information bits by changing the initial order such that a reliability variance of the plurality of information bits is less than a predetermined value after polarization encoding of the initial sequence and the additional sequence;

encoding the initial sequence and the additional sequence using a polar code; and

transmitting the encoded initial sequence and the encoded additional sequence to a receiving device.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the at least one additional sequence is generated such that the reliability variance is minimized.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the at least one additional sequence is generated by randomly changing the initial order.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the at least one additional sequence is generated at least one of: in a Media Access Control (MAC) layer, in a Physical (PHY) layer, and between the MAC layer and the PHY layer.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the at least one additional sequence is generated by changing the initial order based on at least one of: a number of the at least one additional sequence, a coding structure of the polar coding, and a reliability of a subchannel of the coding structure.

6. A method for communication, comprising:

receiving, from a transmitting apparatus, a plurality of encoded sequences generated by encoding a plurality of sequences using a polarization code, the plurality of sequences including a plurality of information bits in different orders, the orders being determined such that a reliability variance of the plurality of information bits is less than a predetermined value after polarization encoding of the plurality of sequences;

processing the plurality of encoded sequences using the polar code to obtain a plurality of processed sequences of soft information values; and

merging the plurality of processed sequences based on the order to obtain the plurality of information bits.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein processing the plurality of encoded sequences comprises:

in response to determining that the plurality of encoded sequences includes only the first encoded sequence and the second encoded sequence,

processing the first encoded sequence to obtain a first ordered set of soft information values in parallel; and

processing the second encoded sequence to obtain, in parallel, a second ordered set of soft information values corresponding to the first ordered set of soft information values.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein merging the plurality of processed sequences based on the order comprises:

combining the first and second ordered sets of soft information values according to an interleaving pattern.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein combining the first and second ordered sets of soft information values according to the interleaving pattern comprises:

in response to determining that the first ordered set (701) and the second ordered set (702) each include two soft information values,

merging a first soft information value (710) in the first ordered set (701) with a second soft information value (722) in the second ordered set (702); and

combining the second soft information values (712) in the first ordered set (701) with the first soft information values (720) in the second ordered set (702).

10. The method of claim 8, wherein combining the first and second ordered sets of soft information values according to the interleaving pattern comprises:

in response to determining that the first sorted set (801) and the second sorted set (802) each include four soft information values,

combining a first soft information value (810) in the first ordered set (801) with a second soft information value (820) in the second ordered set (802);

merging a second soft information value (812) in the first ordered set (801) with a fourth soft information value (824) in the second ordered set (802);

combining the third soft information value (814) in the first ordered set (801) with the first soft information value (818) in the second ordered set (802); and

combining a fourth soft information value (816) in the first ordered set (801) with a third soft information value (822) in the second ordered set (802).

11. A transmitting device, comprising:

at least one processor; and

at least one memory including computer program code;

the at least one memory and the computer program code configured to, with the at least one processor, cause the transmitting apparatus to:

generating an initial sequence including a plurality of information bits in an initial order;

generating at least one additional sequence of the plurality of information bits by changing the initial order such that a reliability variance of the plurality of information bits is less than a predetermined value after polarization encoding of the initial sequence and the additional sequence;

encoding the initial sequence and the additional sequence using a polar code; and

transmitting the encoded initial sequence and the encoded additional sequence to a receiving device.

12. The transmitting apparatus of claim 11, wherein the at least one additional sequence is generated such that the reliability variance is minimized.

13. The transmitting device of claim 11, wherein the at least one additional sequence is generated by randomly changing the initial order.

14. The transmitting apparatus of claim 11, wherein the at least one additional sequence is generated at least one of: in a Media Access Control (MAC) layer, in a Physical (PHY) layer, and between the MAC layer and the PHY layer.

15. The transmitting apparatus of claim 11, wherein the at least one additional sequence is generated by changing the initial order based on at least one of: a number of the at least one additional sequence, a coding structure of the polar coding, and a reliability of a subchannel of the coding structure.

16. A receiving device, comprising:

at least one processor; and

at least one memory including computer program code;

the at least one memory and the computer program code configured to, with the at least one processor, cause the receiving device to:

receiving, from a transmitting apparatus, a plurality of encoded sequences generated by encoding a plurality of sequences using a polarization code, the plurality of sequences including a plurality of information bits in different orders, the orders being determined such that a reliability variance of the plurality of information bits is less than a predetermined value after polarization encoding of the plurality of sequences;

processing the plurality of encoded sequences using the polar code to obtain a plurality of processed sequences of soft information values; and

merging the plurality of processed sequences based on the order to obtain the plurality of information bits.

17. The receiving device of claim 16, wherein the at least one memory and the computer program code are further configured to, with the at least one processor, cause the receiving device to:

in response to determining that the plurality of encoded sequences includes only the first encoded sequence and the second encoded sequence,

processing the first encoded sequence to obtain a first ordered set of soft information values in parallel; and

processing the second encoded sequence to obtain, in parallel, a second ordered set of soft information values corresponding to the first ordered set of soft information values.

18. The receiving device of claim 17, wherein the at least one memory and the computer program code are further configured to, with the at least one processor, cause the receiving device to:

combining the first and second ordered sets of soft information values according to an interleaving pattern.

19. The receiving device of claim 18, wherein the at least one memory and the computer program code are further configured to, with the at least one processor, cause the receiving device to:

in response to determining that the first ordered set (701) and the second ordered set (702) each include two soft information values,

merging a first soft information value (710) in the first ordered set (701) with a second soft information value (722) in the second ordered set (702); and

combining the second soft information values (712) in the first ordered set (701) with the first soft information values (720) in the second ordered set (702).

20. The receiving device of claim 18, wherein the at least one memory and the computer program code are further configured to, with the at least one processor, cause the receiving device to:

in response to determining that the first sorted set (801) and the second sorted set (802) each include four soft information values,

combining a first soft information value (810) in the first ordered set (801) with a second soft information value (820) in the second ordered set (802);

merging a second soft information value (812) in the first ordered set (801) with a fourth soft information value (824) in the second ordered set (802);

combining the third soft information value (814) in the first ordered set (801) with the first soft information value (818) in the second ordered set (802); and

combining a fourth soft information value (816) in the first ordered set (801) with a third soft information value (822) in the second ordered set (802).

21. A computer-readable medium having instructions stored thereon, which, when executed on at least one processor of a device, cause the device to perform the method of any one of claims 1-5 and 6-10.

Technical Field

Embodiments of the present disclosure relate generally to wireless communications, and in particular, to methods, devices, and computer-readable media for performing polarization encoding or decoding.

Background

Polar codes are used as a New Radio (NR) enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) control channel coding solution. It is studied that polar codes have the benefits of low complexity, low time delay and no error floor effect. Therefore, it can also be used in ultra-reliable low latency communication (URLLC) and large-scale machine type communication (mtc).

In the information theory, the polar code is a linear block error correction code. The code construction is based on a multi-recursive concatenation of short kernel codes that transform physical channels into virtual outer channels. As the number of recursions becomes large, the virtual channels tend to have high or low reliability (in other words, they will be polarized), and the data bits are assigned to the most reliable channels.

Disclosure of Invention

In general, example embodiments of the present disclosure provide methods, apparatuses, and computer-readable media for performing polarization encoding or decoding.

In a first aspect, a method for communication is provided. The method comprises the following steps: an initial sequence is generated that includes a plurality of information bits in an initial order. The method further comprises the following steps: at least one additional sequence of the plurality of information bits is generated by changing the initial order such that a reliability variance of the plurality of information bits is less than a predetermined value after polarization encoding of the initial sequence and the additional sequence. The method further comprises the following steps: the initial sequence and the additional sequence are encoded using a polar code. The method further comprises the following steps: the encoded initial sequence and the encoded additional sequence are transmitted to a receiving device.

In a second aspect, a method for communication is provided. The method comprises the following steps: receiving, from a transmitting apparatus, a plurality of encoded sequences generated by encoding a plurality of sequences using a polarization code, the plurality of sequences including a plurality of information bits in different orders, the orders being determined such that a reliability variance of the plurality of information bits is less than a predetermined value after polarization encoding of the plurality of sequences. The method further comprises the following steps: the plurality of encoded sequences are processed using a polar code to obtain a plurality of processed sequences of soft information values. The method further comprises the following steps: the plurality of processed sequences are combined based on the order to obtain a plurality of information bits.

In a third aspect, a transmitting device is provided. The transmitting device includes at least one processor and at least one memory including computer program code. The at least one memory and the computer program code configured to, with the at least one processor, cause the transmitting device to: an initial sequence is generated that includes a plurality of information bits in an initial order. The at least one memory and the computer program code are further configured to, with the at least one processor, cause the transmitting device to: at least one additional sequence of the plurality of information bits is generated by changing the initial order such that a reliability variance of the plurality of information bits is less than a predetermined value after polarization encoding of the initial sequence and the additional sequence. The at least one memory and the computer program code are further configured to, with the at least one processor, cause the transmitting device to: the initial sequence and the additional sequence are encoded using a polar code. The at least one memory and the computer program code are further configured to, with the at least one processor, cause the transmitting device to: the encoded initial sequence and the encoded additional sequence are transmitted to a receiving device.

In a fourth aspect, a receiving device is provided. The receiving device comprises at least one processor and at least one memory including computer program code. The at least one memory and the computer program code configured to, with the at least one processor, cause the receiving device to: receiving, from a transmitting apparatus, a plurality of encoded sequences generated by encoding a plurality of sequences using a polarization code, the plurality of sequences including a plurality of information bits in different orders, the orders being determined such that a reliability variance of the plurality of information bits is less than a predetermined value after polarization encoding of the plurality of sequences. The at least one memory and the computer program code are further configured to, with the at least one processor, cause the receiving device to: the plurality of encoded sequences are processed using a polar code to obtain a plurality of processed sequences of soft information values. The at least one memory and the computer program code are further configured to, with the at least one processor, cause the receiving device to: the plurality of processed sequences are combined based on the order to obtain a plurality of information bits.

In a fifth aspect, a computer-readable medium having instructions stored thereon is provided. The instructions, when executed on at least one processor of a device, cause the device to perform a method according to the first or second aspect.

It will be understood that the summary section is not intended to identify key or essential features of embodiments of the disclosure, nor is it intended to be used to limit the scope of the disclosure. Other features of the present disclosure will become readily apparent from the following description.

Drawings

The above and other objects, features and advantages of the present disclosure will become more apparent from the following more detailed description of some embodiments of the present disclosure in which:

FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram of a communication environment in which embodiments of the present disclosure may be implemented;

FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram of a basic polar code structure;

fig. 3 is a schematic diagram illustrating a process of polarization encoding and decoding between a transmitting device and a receiving device in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure;

FIG. 4 illustrates a flow diagram of an example method according to some embodiments of the present disclosure;

FIG. 5 is a schematic diagram illustrating where generating at least one additional sequence may be accomplished;

fig. 6 shows a flow diagram of an example method according to some other embodiments of the present disclosure;

fig. 7 is a schematic diagram illustrating an example of an interleaving pattern for combining soft information values, in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure;

fig. 8 is a schematic diagram illustrating another example of an interleaving pattern for combining soft information values, in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure;

FIG. 9 is a graph illustrating simulated performance gain according to some embodiments of the present disclosure;

FIG. 10 is a graph illustrating simulation results for performance evaluation, according to some embodiments of the present disclosure; and

FIG. 11 is a simplified block diagram of a device suitable for implementing embodiments of the present disclosure.

Throughout the drawings, the same or similar reference numbers refer to the same or similar elements.

Detailed Description

The principles of the present disclosure will now be described with reference to a few exemplary embodiments. It is to be understood that these examples are described for illustrative purposes only and are intended to aid those skilled in the art in understanding and enabling the present disclosure, and are not intended to suggest any limitation as to the scope of the disclosure. The present disclosure described herein may be implemented in various ways other than those described below.

In the following description and claims, unless defined otherwise, all technical and scientific terms used herein have the same meaning as commonly understood by one of ordinary skill in the art to which this disclosure belongs.

As used herein, the term "network device" or "base station" (BS) refers to a device capable of providing or hosting a cell or coverage area in which terminal devices can communicate. Examples of network devices include, but are not limited to, a node B (NodeB or NB), an evolved NodeB (eNodeB or eNB), a next generation NodeB (gnb), a Remote Radio Unit (RRU), a Radio Head (RH), a Remote Radio Head (RRH), a low power node (such as a femto node, pico node), and the like. For purposes of discussion, some embodiments will be described below with reference to an eNB or a gNB as an example of a network device.

As used herein, the term "terminal device" refers to any device having wireless or wired communication capabilities. Examples of terminal devices include, but are not limited to, User Equipment (UE), personal computers, desktop computers, mobile phones, cellular phones, smart phones, Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), portable computers, image capture devices such as digital cameras, gaming devices, music storage and playback devices, or internet devices that enable wireless or wired internet access and browsing, among others. For purposes of discussion, some embodiments will be described below with reference to a UE as an example of a terminal device, and the terms "terminal device" and "user equipment" (UE) may be used interchangeably within the context of the present disclosure.

The term "circuitry" as used herein may refer to one or more or all of the following: (a) hardware-only circuit implementations (such as implementations in analog and/or digital circuitry only), and (b) combinations of hardware circuitry and software, such as (if applicable): (i) a combination of analog and/or digital hardware circuit(s) and software/firmware, and (ii) hardware processor(s) with software (including digital signal processor (s)), any portion of software and memory(s) that work together to cause a device, such as a mobile phone or server, to perform various functions, and (c) hardware circuit(s) and/or processor(s), such as a microprocessor(s) or a portion of a microprocessor(s), that require software (e.g., firmware) for operation, but may not be present when software is not required for operation.

This definition of circuitry applies to all uses of the term in this application, including in any claims. As another example, as used in this application, the term "circuitry" also covers an implementation of merely a hardware circuit or processor (or multiple processors) or a portion of a hardware circuit or processor and its (or their) accompanying software and/or firmware. The term circuitry also covers (e.g., and where applicable to the particular claim element (s)) a baseband integrated circuit or processor integrated circuit for a mobile device or a similar integrated circuit in a server, a cellular network device, or other computing or network device.

As used herein, the singular forms "a", "an" and "the" are intended to include the plural forms as well, unless the context clearly indicates otherwise. The term "including" and its variants are to be read as open-ended terms, which mean "including, but not limited to". The term "based on" will be read as "based, at least in part, on". The terms "one embodiment" and "an embodiment" are to be read as "at least one embodiment". The term "another embodiment" will be read as "at least one other embodiment". The terms "first," "second," and the like may refer to different objects or the same object. The following may include other definitions, both explicit and implicit.

In some examples, a value, process, or device is referred to as "best," "lowest," "highest," "minimum," "maximum," or the like. It will be appreciated that such descriptions are intended to indicate that a selection may be made among many of the functional alternatives used, and that such selections need not be better, smaller, higher, or otherwise more preferred than others.

Fig. 1 is a schematic diagram of a communication environment 100 in which embodiments of the present disclosure may be implemented. The communication environment 100 may include a network device 110, the network device 110 providing wireless connectivity to a plurality of terminal devices 120, 130 within its coverage area. Terminal devices 120 and 130 may communicate with network device 110 via wireless transmission channels 115 or 125 and/or with each other via transmission channel 135.

It will be understood that the number of network devices and the number of terminal devices as shown in fig. 1 are for illustrative purposes only and do not imply any limitations. Communication environment 100 may include any suitable number of network devices and terminal devices adapted to implement embodiments of the present disclosure. In addition, it will be appreciated that various wireless communications as well as wired communications (if desired) may exist between these network devices and the terminal device.

Communications in communication environment 100 may conform to any suitable standard including, but not limited to, global system for mobile communications (GSM), extended coverage global system for mobile internet of things (EC-GSM-IoT), Long Term Evolution (LTE), LTE evolution, LTE advanced (LTE-a), Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA), Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA), GSM EDGE Radio Access Network (GERAN), and so forth.

Further, communications in communication environment 100 may be performed according to any generation of communication protocols currently known or to be developed in the future. Examples of communication protocols include, but are not limited to, first generation (1G), second generation (2G), 2.5G, 2.75G, third generation (3G), fourth generation (4G), 4.5G, and fifth generation (5G) communication protocols.

By way of illustrative example, the various example embodiments or techniques described herein may be applied to various terminal devices, such as Machine Type Communication (MTC) terminal devices, enhanced machine type communication (eMTC) terminal devices, internet of things (IoT) terminal devices, and/or narrowband IoT terminal devices.

IoT may refer to an increasing group of objects that may have internet or network connectivity so that these objects can send and receive information to and from other network devices. For example, many sensor type applications or devices may monitor physical conditions or states and may send reports to a server or other network device, for example, upon the occurrence of an event. Machine type communication (MTC or machine-to-machine communication) may be characterized, for example, by fully automatic data generation, exchange, processing, and actuation between intelligent machines with or without human intervention.

Furthermore, in an example embodiment, the terminal device or UE may be a UE/terminal device with URLLC application. A cell (or cells) may include a plurality of terminal devices connected to the cell, including different types or classes of terminal devices, including MTC, NB-IoT, URLLC classes, or other UE classes, for example.

Various example embodiments may be applied to a wide variety of wireless technologies or wireless networks, such as LTE, LTE-a, 5G, cmWave, and/or mmWave band networks, IoT, MTC, eMTC, URLLC, etc., or any other wireless network or wireless technology. These example networks or technologies are provided merely as illustrative examples, and the various example embodiments may be applied to any wireless technology/wireless network.

As mentioned above, polar coding is a novel and promising channel coding solution for approaching the capacity of a communication channel, which is a linear block code developed by Erdal Arikan. It is the first channel code with a capacity that is explicitly structured to implement a symmetric binary input, discrete, memoryless channel (BI-DMC). Polar codes have comparable and sometimes even better performance than the most advanced codes, such as LDPC, and at the same time the decoding complexity of polar codes is low. These features make polar codes very attractive for many applications, such as digital communication and storage.

On the other hand, duplication is an effective method to extend coverage for terminal devices (such as IoT devices). Furthermore, in some designs for URLLC, the eNB may even transmit multiple copies to reduce latency. The conventional solution is to transmit the same copy or different circular buffer bits for merging.

The transmission of multiple copies is also called additive combining. Performance is inferior to other merging methods, such as Incremental Redundancy (IR) merging. Another type of approach is to construct larger polar codes from different copies based on a circular buffer. The performance is better than the append merge. However, there is a limit to the length of the mother code. If the maximum supported mother code length is 1024, it is impossible to construct one 2048 code using two copies having a mother code length of 1024. Furthermore, for URLLC, larger codes take more decoding time, so for some scenarios this is not the best solution for URLLC.

In addition, in another conventional solution, the different copies are further structured into larger polar codes in later decoding. The retransmission provides further protection for different bits mapped to subchannels with different reliabilities. The drawback is that this solution is not feasible when there is a limitation of the maximum mother code length, i.e. the code pattern cannot be extended. Another disadvantage is the delay, which increases when more copies are packed together.

The inventors have found that in order to speed up the decoding latency, a parallel decoding solution can be used. This is very useful for URLLC, which requires very low decoding delay. In parallel decoding solutions, 2 bits, 4 bits, 8 bits or more can be decoded simultaneously, so the decoding latency is cut by 50%, 75% or more. Repetition and combining are not considered in some conventional solutions and the reliability of the bad sub-channels is not improved. Based on this multi-bit decoding architecture, the present disclosure proposes a novel transmission solution based on polar codes, which can improve decoding performance without any loss of decoding latency.

In particular, in the proposed solution, the parallel decoding architecture comprises a plurality of decoding sequences, wherein the information bits in each set are decoded simultaneously. This can be used in polarization encoding/decoding. The basic polar code structure is shown in fig. 2, where a maximum of 4 bits 210 to 216 corresponding to a Kronecker matrix of size 4 can be transmitted. Reference numerals 220 to 226 refer to the exclusive or operator. If two bits of parallel decoding are used, there are two decoding sets, each containing two information bits. In other words, one decoding set may be bits 210 and 212 and another decoding set may be bits 214 and 216. In other scenarios, it may also be possible to decode 4 bits simultaneously. For URLLC, multiple copies of information may be transmitted simultaneously on different resource blocks, e.g. using polar encoding/decoding, because the requirements for reliability may be very high.

As mentioned, the general principle of polarization codes is that the reliability of different sub-channels is different and thus shows polarization effects. In encoding, some of the least reliable subchannels are used to transmit the frozen bits, i.e. the known bits. However, the reliability of the remaining subchannels used to transmit the information bits is also different.

The inventors found that the performance bottleneck of transmissions using polar encoding/decoding is the relatively less reliable sub-channels used for transmitting the information bits, and that the block error rate (BLER) of the transmitted packets is limited by these less reliable sub-channels. Although repetition may improve reliability, less reliable sub-channels are still less reliable. The best transmission solution is that all sub-channels used for transmitting information bits have equal reliability, i.e. ideal polarization, although this is difficult for polarization codes (especially for small data).

In view of the foregoing analysis and problems in the existing solutions, embodiments of the present disclosure propose a new interleaving and repetition solution, which builds on top of the parallel decoding structure. This solution improves the polarization effect of less reliable sub-channels by different bit mappings within the parallel encoding/decoding sequence of different repeated copies. Thus, it improves the overall decoding performance. In addition, this structure has the benefit of low decoding latency compared to conventional solutions, since it does not require the construction of larger codewords.

In summary, the novel features of the embodiments of the present disclosure are as follows. A new polar code transmission solution with different interleaving patterns for the information bits of parallel encoding/decoding sequences. A decoding method utilizes an interleaving combination corresponding to the proposed interleaving coding structure for combining soft information values during decoding. Interleaving solutions for parallel decoding of information bits inside a sequence are proposed so that optimal performance can be achieved.

With the embodiments of the present disclosure, the reliability of a plurality of information bits after polarization encoding is made substantially equal, and thus the performance of polarization encoding and decoding is improved. Hereinafter, some embodiments according to the present disclosure will be described in detail with reference to fig. 3 to 8.

Fig. 3 is a schematic diagram 300 illustrating a process of polarization encoding and decoding between a transmitting device and a receiving device, in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure. In the context of the present disclosure, for simplicity and without loss of generality of discussion, the network device 110 in the communication environment 100 may be described as a transmitting device and the terminal device 120 in the communication environment 100 may be described as a receiving device. It will be appreciated that in some other communication scenarios, terminal device 120 may be a transmitting device and network device 110 may be a receiving device.

In general, the transmitting device 110 may transmit information to the receiving device 120 for communication. For example, the transmitted information may be data information, control information, and the like. Prior to transmission, the transmitting device 110 may perform coding (such as channel coding) on the information using a polar code in order to improve the transmission quality. Correspondingly, the receiving apparatus 120 may receive the encoded information and obtain the information by decoding the encoded information using a polarization code.

Hereinafter, various operations performed at the transmitting device 110 for encoding and transmitting information will be described with reference to fig. 4, and various operations performed at the receiving device 120 for receiving and decoding information will be described later with reference to fig. 6.

Fig. 4 illustrates a flow diagram of an example method 400 in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure. As noted, the method 400 may be implemented at a transmitting device, such as the network device 110 or the terminal devices 120, 130 shown in fig. 1. For discussion purposes, the method 400 will be described with reference to fig. 1 and 3.

At block 410, the transmitting device 110 generates an initial sequence 310, e.g., based on information to be transmitted to the receiving device 120. The initial sequence 310 includes a plurality of information bits 315-1 through 315-N (collectively information bits 315) in an initial order. In the context of the present disclosure, a sequence of information bits may also be referred to as a data block or block.

At block 420, the transmitting device 110 generates at least one additional sequence 320 of the plurality of information bits 315 by changing the initial order. The change to the initial order for the at least one additional sequence 320 is performed such that: after the polar encoding of the initial sequence 310 and the additional sequence 320, the reliability variance of the plurality of information bits 315 is less than a predetermined value.

In other words, the initial sequence 310 and the at least one additional sequence 320 have the same information bits 315, but the order of the information bits 315 is different in the initial sequence 310 and the at least one additional sequence 320. In addition, the order of the information bits 315 for the at least one additional sequence 320 is selected such that the reliability variance of the information bits 315 after polarization encoding of the initial sequence 310 and the additional sequence 320 is less than a predetermined value. For example, the predetermined value herein may be reasonably determined based on the technical environment and design requirements, and the like.

As mentioned above, the reliability of different sub-channels in the polar coding is different. By changing the initial order of information bits 315 in at least one additional sequence 320, particular information bits (such as information bit 315-1) in different encoded sequences may pass through different subchannels, rather than always passing through the same subchannel as would be the case if all of the initial and additional sequences had the same initial order of information bits 315. In this way, the reliability of the information bits 315 may be averaged, i.e., the reliability variance of the information bits 315 may be reduced below a predetermined value, and in some embodiments even close to zero.

For a more detailed explanation, it is assumed that there are K information bits in the initial sequence 310 and the at least one additional sequence 320, and that there are N sequences to be decoded in parallel at the receiving device 120, i.e., the number of the at least one additional sequence 320 is N-1. Order toIs the bit i transmitted on the sequence j. For the merging method C, the optimal bitmap can be defined to minimize the following equation:

as can be seen from this equation, when there are enough additional sequences, it is possible to make all the information bits 315 in the combined sequence at the receiving end have the same reliability, i.e., the reliability variance of the information bits 315 may be close to zero after the polarization encoding of the initial sequence 310 and the additional sequences 320.

Thus, in some other embodiments, at least one additional sequence 320 may be generated such that the reliability variance of the information bits 315 is minimized. In other words, when a combining method, such as simple maximal ratio combining, is defined, the order of the information bits 315 for the at least one additional sequence 320 may be obtained by: if the encoding/decoding sequence is not large, that is, it comprises a small number of information bits, all possible sequential combinations are checked. In this way, the performance of the polar encoding/decoding can be optimized.

If the encoding/decoding sequence is very large, i.e. comprises a large number of information bits, it is possible to use some other suitable method to approach the optimum performance, e.g. by a random distribution. That is, the at least one additional sequence 320 may be generated by randomly changing the initial order. In this way, the computational complexity for determining the order of the information bits 315 for the at least one additional sequence 320 may be reduced.

In some embodiments, the at least one additional sequence 320 may be generated by changing the initial order of the information bits 315 based on the number of the at least one additional sequence 320, the coding structure of the polar coding, and/or the reliability of the subchannels of the coding structure. The reason is that these factors may affect the optimal order of the information bits 315 in at least the additional sequence 320. In this way, the order of the information bits 315 for the at least one additional sequence 320 may be determined more efficiently.

In practice, embodiments that generate at least one additional sequence 320 may have various options. Fig. 5 is a diagram 500 illustrating where generating at least one additional sequence 320 may be implemented. As shown, the generation of the at least one additional sequence 320 may be performed in a Media Access Control (MAC) layer 510, in a Physical (PHY) layer 520, and/or between the MAC layer 510 and the PHY layer 520 (i.e., in paths 515 and 525). If the generation is performed between MAC layer 510 and PHY layer 520, or as part of MAC layer 510, there is no regulatory impact on PHY layer 520. In addition, the decoding enhancements may depend on the specific implementation.

Referring back to fig. 4, at block 430, the transmitting device 110 encodes the initial sequence 310 and the additional sequence 320 using a polarization code. In other words, the transmitting device 110 performs polarization encoding on the initial sequence 310 and the additional sequence 320. In performing polarization encoding, various encoding algorithms may be utilized, including existing polarization encoding algorithms as well as possibly other polarization encoding algorithms to be developed in the future.

In addition, although fig. 3 shows the initial sequence 310 and the additional sequence 320 to be encoded in parallel, other suitable encoding schemes may be employed in other embodiments, such as serial encoding or a combination thereof. Although fig. 3 shows information bits 315 as being encoded serially, in other embodiments other suitable encoding schemes may be employed, such as parallel encoding or a combination thereof.

At block 440, the transmitting device 110 transmits the encoded initial sequence 330 and the encoded additional sequence 340 to the receiving device 120. In some embodiments, the transmitting device 110 may transmit the encoded initial sequence 330 and the encoded additional sequence 340 via the transmission channel 115 as shown in fig. 1. Various operations performed at the receiving device 120 for receiving and obtaining the information bits 315 transmitted by the transmitting device 110 will be described below with reference to fig. 6.

Fig. 6 illustrates a flow diagram of an example method 600 in accordance with some other embodiments of the present disclosure. As noted, the method 600 may be implemented at a receiving device, such as the network device 110 or the terminal device 120, 130 shown in fig. 1. For discussion purposes, the method 600 will be described with reference to fig. 1 and 3.

At block 610, the receiving device 120 receives the plurality of encoded sequences 330, 340 from the transmitting device 110, the plurality of encoded sequences 330, 340 being generated by encoding the plurality of sequences 310, 320 using a polar code. The plurality of sequences 310, 320 comprise a plurality of information bits 315 in a different order. As described above, these orders are determined such that: after polar encoding of the plurality of sequences 310, 320, the reliability variance of the plurality of information bits 315 is less than a predetermined value. The predetermined value here can be determined reasonably based on the technical environment and design requirements, etc.

At block 620, the receiving device 120 processes the plurality of encoded sequences 330, 340 using a polar code to obtain a plurality of processed sequences 350, 360 of soft information values 355-1 through 355-N (collectively referred to as soft information values 355). The soft information value 355 may be a real number and may correspond to the information bit 315. Similar to the information bits 315, the order of the soft information values 355 in the processed sequences 350, 360 is different.

In some embodiments, if the plurality of encoded sequences 330, 340 includes only two encoded sequences, the receiving device 120 may process a first of the two encoded sequences to obtain a first ordered set of soft information values in parallel and process a second of the two encoded sequences to obtain a second ordered set of soft information values corresponding to the first ordered set of soft information values in parallel. In other words, both the first and second ordered sets correspond to the same information bits in the initial sequence 310 and the additional sequence 320. In this way, decoding performance may be improved compared to processing soft information values in the encoded sequence 330, 340 one by one.

At block 630, based on the order of the information bits 315 in the sequences 310, 320, the receiving device 120 combines the multiple processed sequences 350, 360 to obtain multiple information bits 315. For example, the order may be predetermined prior to transmission of the plurality of encoded sequences 330, 340, and the receiving device 120 may be known. That is, the receiving device 120 may combine the soft information values 355 obtained from the multiple processed sequences 350, 360 in a predetermined combining manner that matches the order of the information bits 315 in the sequences 310, 320. After combining, the receiving device 120 may perform bit decisions, e.g., by tree pruning (path selection), to determine the value of the information bits 315.

As discussed above, in some embodiments, the plurality of encoded sequences 350, 360 may include only two encoded sequences, and two corresponding ordered sets of soft information values may be obtained from the two encoded sequences. In these embodiments, the receiving device 120 may combine the first and second ordered sets of soft information values according to an interleaving pattern. In this manner, the receiving device 120 may correctly combine soft information values corresponding to the same information bits of the information bits 315. In the following, some examples of interleaving patterns are described with reference to fig. 7 and 8.

Fig. 7 is a schematic diagram illustrating an example of an interleaving pattern 700 for combining soft information values, according to some embodiments of the present disclosure. As shown, the interleaving pattern 700 involves two sequences of soft information values. The first sequence comprises, among other soft information values, soft information values 710 and 712, and they constitute a first ordered set of soft information values 701 and may be processed in parallel. The soft information values 710 and 712 are the first and second soft information values in the first sorted set 701.

Likewise, the second sequence includes soft information values 720 and 722, among other soft information values, and they form the second ordered set of soft information values 702 and may be processed in parallel. The soft information values 720 and 722 are the first and second soft information values in the second sorted set 702. Fig. 7 also shows the polarization structure associated with the two sequences, where reference numerals 715 and 725 refer to the xor operator.

To obtain information bits corresponding to the soft information values in the first ordered set 701 and the second ordered set 702, the receiving device 120 may combine the first ordered set 701 and the second ordered set 702 according to the interleaving pattern 700. For example, the receiving device 120 may combine the soft information values 710 with the soft information values 722 and combine the soft information values 712 with the soft information values 720. In this way, the encoding/decoding performance is improved and the complexity of the combining is relatively low.

Fig. 8 is a schematic diagram illustrating another example of an interleaving pattern 800 for combining soft information values, according to some embodiments of the present disclosure. As shown, the interleaving pattern 800 involves two sequences of soft information values. The first sequence comprises, among other soft information values, soft information values 810, 814 and 816, and they constitute a first ordered set 801 of soft information values and may be processed in parallel. The soft information values 810, 814, and 816 are the first soft information value, the second soft information value, the third soft information value, and the fourth soft information value in the first sorted set 801.

Likewise, the second sequence includes soft information values 818, 820, 822, and 824 in addition to other soft information values, and they constitute a second ordered set of soft information values 802 and may be processed in parallel. The soft information values 818, 820, 822, and 824 are the first, second, third, and fourth soft information values in the second ordered set 802. Fig. 8 also shows the polarization structure associated with the two sequences, where reference numerals 830 to 844 refer to the xor operator.

To obtain information bits corresponding to soft information values in the first sorted set 801 and the second sorted set 802, the receiving device 120 may combine the first sorted set 801 and the second sorted set 802 according to the interleaving pattern 800. For example, the receiving device 120 may combine the soft information values 810 with the soft information values 820, combine the soft information values 812 with the soft information values 824, combine the soft information values 814 with the soft information values 818, and combine the soft information values 816 with the soft information values 822. In this way, the encoding/decoding performance is further improved at the cost of more complex combining compared to fig. 7.

Fig. 9 is a graph 900 illustrating simulated performance gain according to some embodiments of the present disclosure. In the simulation, two simple but convincing solutions were compared. One solution is a simple append merge solution and another solution is an example solution according to embodiments of the present disclosure. In addition, only the basic polar code structure (i.e., only two subchannels and two bits on a subchannel) may be decoded simultaneously. In fig. 9, the horizontal axis refers to signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and the vertical axis refers to gain in dB.

In the simulation, the gain 910 is calculated by checking the SNR for the additional combining solution so that it may have the same BER as compared to the example solution according to an embodiment of the present disclosure. As can be seen from fig. 9, embodiments according to the present disclosure provide approximately 1dB of gain on average. The simulation may evaluate the merging effect of the subchannels.

Fig. 10 is a graph 1000 illustrating simulation results for performance evaluation, in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure. In the simulation, four solutions including the example solution according to the embodiment of the present disclosure were compared. In fig. 10, curve 1010-1030 refers to a conventional encoding/decoding transmission solution with different number of decoding paths (1, 2 and 4, respectively), and curve 1040 refers to an example solution according to an embodiment of the present disclosure. In fig. 10, the horizontal axis refers to SNR and the vertical axis refers to BLER.

In the simulation, the number of information bits to be transmitted is K-12, the number of Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC) bits is C-6, the number of output bits is N-16, and two data blocks (or sequences) are transmitted simultaneously. Conventional solutions transmit two identical sequences and combine them before decoding. An example solution according to an embodiment of the present disclosure transmits two data blocks with the information bit arrangement proposed herein, processes these data blocks with two decoders, respectively, and then performs a merging.

As can be seen from fig. 10, embodiments according to the present disclosure outperform the conventional solution by 0.3dB at 1% BLER and 0.5dB at 0.1% BLER. Note that the BLER of the example solution according to embodiments of the present disclosure decreases faster than the conventional solution, i.e. with a higher slope, which makes it a higher performance gain for higher SNR. For URLLC, for example, the BLER requirement may be 1e-5, so a gain of more than 1dB may be expected. This value is considered to be very high in the encoding.

In some embodiments, an apparatus (e.g., network device 110 or terminal device 120, 130) for performing method 400 may include respective means for performing corresponding steps in method 400. These components may be implemented in any suitable manner. For example, it may be implemented by circuitry or software modules.

In some embodiments, the apparatus comprises: means for generating an initial sequence comprising a plurality of information bits in an initial order; means for generating at least one additional sequence of the plurality of information bits by changing the initial order such that a reliability variance of the plurality of information bits is less than a predetermined value after polarization encoding of the initial sequence and the additional sequence; means for encoding the initial sequence and the additional sequence using a polar code; and means for transmitting the encoded initial sequence and the encoded additional sequence to a receiving device.

In some embodiments, at least one additional sequence is generated such that the reliability variance is minimized.

In some embodiments, the at least one additional sequence is generated by randomly changing the initial order.

In some embodiments, the at least one additional sequence is generated at least one of: in the Medium Access Control (MAC) layer, in the Physical (PHY) layer, and between the MAC layer and the PHY layer.

In some embodiments, the at least one additional sequence is generated by changing the initial order based on at least one of: the number of at least one additional sequence, the coding structure of the polar coding, and the reliability of the subchannels of the coding structure.

In some embodiments, an apparatus (e.g., network device 110 or terminal device 120, 130) for performing method 600 may include respective means for performing corresponding steps in method 600. These components may be implemented in any suitable manner. For example, it may be implemented by circuitry or software modules.

In some embodiments, the apparatus comprises: means for receiving, from a transmitting apparatus, a plurality of encoded sequences generated by encoding a plurality of sequences using a polarization code, the plurality of sequences including a plurality of information bits in different orders, the orders being determined such that a reliability variance of the plurality of information bits is less than a predetermined value after polarization encoding of the plurality of sequences; means for processing the plurality of encoded sequences using a polar code to obtain a plurality of processed sequences of soft information values; and means for combining the plurality of processed sequences based on the order to obtain a plurality of information bits.

In some embodiments, the means for processing the plurality of encoded sequences comprises: for processing the first encoded sequence to obtain a first ordered set of soft information values in parallel, in response to determining that the plurality of encoded sequences includes only the first encoded sequence and the second encoded sequence; and means for processing the second encoded sequence to obtain, in parallel, a second ordered set of soft information values corresponding to the first ordered set of soft information values.

In some embodiments, the means for merging the plurality of processed sequences comprises: means for combining the first and second ordered sets of soft information values according to an interleaving pattern.

In some embodiments, the means for merging the plurality of processed sequences comprises: means for combining first soft information values in the first ordered set with second soft information values in the second ordered set in response to determining that the first ordered set and the second ordered set each include two soft information values; and means for combining the second soft information values in the first ordered set with the first soft information values in the second ordered set.

In some embodiments, the means for merging the plurality of processed sequences comprises: in response to determining that the first ordered set and the second ordered set each include four soft information values, combining the first soft information values in the first ordered set with the second soft information values in the second ordered set; combining the second soft information value in the first ordered set with a fourth soft information value in the second ordered set; combining the third soft information values in the first ordered set with the first soft information values in the second ordered set; and combining the fourth soft information values in the first ordered set with the third soft information values in the second ordered set.

Fig. 11 is a simplified block diagram of a device 1100 suitable for implementing embodiments of the present disclosure. The device 1100 may be seen as a further example embodiment of the network device 110 and the terminal devices 120, 130 as shown in fig. 1 and 3. Thus, the device 1100 may be implemented at the network device 110 or the terminal device 120, 130 or as at least a part of the network device 110 or the terminal device 120, 130.

As shown, the device 1100 includes a processor 1110, a memory 1120 coupled to the processor 1110, a suitable Transmitter (TX) and Receiver (RX)1140 coupled to the processor 1110, and a communication interface coupled to the TX/RX 1140. Memory 1120 stores at least a portion of program 1130. TX/RX 1140 is used for bi-directional communication. TX/RX 1140 has at least one antenna to facilitate communications, although in practice an access node referred to in this application may have several antennas. The communication interface may represent any interface necessary for communication with other network elements, such as an X2 interface for bidirectional communication between enbs, an S1 interface for communication between a Mobility Management Entity (MME)/serving gateway (S-GW) and an eNB, a Un interface for communication between an eNB and a Relay Node (RN), or a Uu interface for communication between an eNB and a terminal device.

Program 1130 is assumed to include program instructions that, when executed by associated processor 1110, enable device 1100 to operate in accordance with embodiments of the present disclosure as discussed herein with reference to fig. 3-10. The embodiments herein may be implemented by computer software executable by the processor 1110 of the device 1100, or by hardware, or by a combination of software and hardware. The processor 1110 may be configured to implement various embodiments of the present disclosure. Further, the combination of the processor 1110 and the memory 1120 may form a processing component 1150 adapted to implement various embodiments of the present disclosure.

The memory 1120 may be of any type suitable to a local technology network and may be implemented using any suitable data storage technology, such as non-transitory computer-readable storage media, semiconductor-based memory devices, magnetic memory devices and systems, optical memory devices and systems, fixed memory and removable memory, as non-limiting examples. Although only one memory 1120 is shown in device 1100, there may be several physically distinct memory modules in device 1100. The processor 1110 may be of any type suitable for a local technology network, and may include one or more of the following as non-limiting examples: general purpose computers, special purpose computers, microprocessors, Digital Signal Processors (DSPs), and processors based on a multi-core processor architecture. Device 1100 may have multiple processors, such as application specific integrated circuit chips that are time-dependent from a clock synchronized to the host processor.

The components included in the apparatus and/or devices of the present disclosure may be implemented in various ways, including software, hardware, firmware, or any combination thereof. In one embodiment, one or more of the units may be implemented using software and/or firmware (e.g., machine executable instructions stored on a storage medium). Some or all of the elements in an apparatus and/or device may be implemented, at least in part, by one or more hardware logic components in addition to or in place of machine-executable instructions. By way of example, and not limitation, illustrative types of hardware logic components that may be used include Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs), Application Specific Standard Products (ASSPs), system on a Chip Systems (SOCs), Complex Programmable Logic Devices (CPLDs), and the like.

In general, the various embodiments of the disclosure may be implemented in hardware or special purpose circuits, software, logic or any combination thereof. Some aspects may be implemented in hardware, while other aspects may be implemented in firmware or software which may be executed by a controller, microprocessor or other computing device. While various aspects of the embodiments of the disclosure are illustrated and described as block diagrams, flow charts, or using some other pictorial representation, it is well understood that the blocks, apparatus, systems, techniques or methods described herein may be implemented in, as non-limiting examples, hardware, software, firmware, special purpose circuits or logic, general purpose hardware or controller or other computing devices, or some combination thereof.

The present disclosure also provides at least one computer program product tangibly stored on a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium. The computer program product includes computer-executable instructions, such as those included in program modules, that are executed in a device on a target real or virtual processor to perform the processes or methods described above with reference to any of fig. 4 and 6. Generally, program modules include routines, programs, libraries, objects, classes, components, data structures, etc. that perform particular tasks or implement particular abstract data types. The functionality of the program modules may be combined or split between program modules as desired in various embodiments. Machine-executable instructions for program modules may be executed within a local device or within a distributed device. In a distributed facility, program modules may be located in both local and remote memory storage media.

Program code for performing the methods of the present disclosure may be written in any combination of one or more programming languages. These program codes may be provided to a processor or controller of a general purpose computer, special purpose computer, or other programmable data processing apparatus, such that the program codes, when executed by the processor or controller, cause the functions/operations specified in the flowchart and/or block diagram to be performed. The program code may execute entirely on the machine, partly on the machine, as a stand-alone software package, partly on the machine and partly on a remote machine or entirely on the remote machine or server.

The program code described above may be embodied on a machine-readable medium, which may be any tangible medium that can contain, or store a program for use by or in connection with an instruction execution system, apparatus, or device. The machine-readable medium may be a machine-readable signal medium or a machine-readable storage medium. A machine-readable medium may include, but is not limited to, an electronic, magnetic, optical, electromagnetic, infrared, or semiconductor system, apparatus, or device, or any suitable combination of the foregoing. More specific examples of a machine-readable storage medium would include an electrical connection having one or more wires, a portable computer diskette, a hard disk, a Random Access Memory (RAM), a read-only memory (ROM), an erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROM or flash memory), an optical fiber, a portable compact disc read-only memory (CD-ROM), an optical storage device, a magnetic storage device, or any suitable combination of the foregoing.

Further, while operations are depicted in a particular order, this should not be understood as requiring that such operations be performed in the particular order shown or in sequential order, or that all illustrated operations be performed, to achieve desirable results. In some cases, multitasking and parallel processing may be advantageous. Likewise, while the above discussion contains several specific embodiment details, these should not be construed as limitations on the scope of the disclosure, but rather as descriptions of features that may be specific to particular embodiments. Certain features that are described in the context of separate embodiments can also be implemented in combination in a single embodiment. Conversely, various features that are described in the context of a single embodiment can also be implemented in multiple embodiments separately or in any suitable subcombination.

Although the disclosure has been described in language specific to structural features and/or methodological acts, it is to be understood that the disclosure defined in the appended claims is not necessarily limited to the specific features or acts described above. Rather, the specific features and acts described above are disclosed as example forms of implementing the claims.