Multi-Level Construction of Polar Codes for Half-Duplex Wireless Coded-Cooperative Networks

In this paper, Plotkin's construction is employed to buildup longer length polar codes with the help of shorter length polar codes. Firstly, we present the multi-level code construction steps for non-cooperative communication schemes. Secondly, we extend the proposed multi-level polar code construction to coded-cooperative scenarios due to the parallel split in the proposed encoding scheme. Since, relay plays a pivotal role in the overall bit error rate (BER) performance of the coded-cooperative schemes, therefore, an efficient criteria of information bit selection at the relay is also presented. Furthermore, we propose a novel joint successive cancellation decoding scheme, which is employed at the destination and provides significant coding gains. Various numerical simulations show that the proposed polar coded-cooperative scheme (PCCS) scheme not only outperforms non-cooperative polar coded scheme but also the existing cooperative schemes for polar codes under identical conditions over an additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and quasi-static Rayleigh fading channels.