Design and Implementation of a Polar Codes Blind Detection Scheme

In blind detection, a set of candidates has to be decoded within a strict time constraint, to identify which transmissions are directed at the user equipment. Blind detection is required by the 3GPP LTE/LTE-A and fifth generation (5G) standards. With the selection of polar codes in 5G, the issue of blind detection of polar codes needs to be addressed. A polar code blind detection scheme has been recently proposed where the user ID is transmitted instead of some of the frozen bits. We propose an architecture to implement an improved version of such scheme. A first, coarse decoding phase helps selecting a subset of candidates that is decoded by a more powerful algorithm: an early stopping criterion is also introduced for the second decoding phase. The architecture relies on a tunable decoder that can be used for both phases. The architecture is synthesized and implementation results are reported for various system parameters. The reported area occupation and latency, obtained in 65-nm CMOS technology, are able to meet 5G requirements.