Polar coded communication system design

In 2008, polar codes, which are the only channel codes whose performance are mathematically proven, are introduced by Arıkan. The introduction of polar codes was a milestone in coding society. The implementation of polar codes at high speeds is of critical importance, especially in communication systems such as 5G where high speed and parallel processing ICs such as FPGA are employed. In FPGA technology, it is of critical importance how much space the algorithm occupies in the integrated chip. The area occupied by the algorithm is directly proportional to the energy use of the FPGA and the delay of the process. In this thesis, we propose a polar encoding method that occupies less hardware implementation space. It is seen that with the innovative polar encoding scheme, considering the implementation area used, a noticeable advantage for FPGA implementations is achieved. We also analyse the performance of polar codes with pilot-based channel estimation and equalization methods. By using the frozen bits of the polar codes, the pulse and frequency responses of the communication channels can be estimated. Among the estimation and equalizer methods, least squares and minimum mean square (MMSE) methods are used. The employment of frozen bits provides an advantage in increasing both the processing speed and the data rate in the receiver at the same time. This is because there is no need for different packet structures and operations in the communication protocol for channel estimation and equalization. Keywords: Pole codes, error correction, channel estimation, channel matching, FPGA, code optimization, successive cancelation, VHDL implementation