A New Specialized Node for Optimizing Decoding by Fast-Simplified Successive Cancellation of Polar Codes

¹ Engineering Sciences Laboratory, Polydisciplinary Faculty of Taza, Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University, Fez, 30000, Morocco.
² Mathematical and Informatics Engineering Laboratory, Ibn Zohr University, Agadir, 80000, Morocco.

^* e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Published online: 24 June 2026

Abstract

Error-correction codes ensure communication reliability, a critical requirement in modern wireless systems. Among these, polar codes, adopted in the fifth generation (5G) mobile network for channel control, achieve capacity via successive cancellation decoding. However, its sequential nature incurs high complexity. The fast-simplified successive cancellation decoder reduces this complexity using specialized nodes capable of processing entire subtrees in a single operation. In this work, we introduce a new type of specialized node, based on the exploitation of a novel structural property of polar codes. By identifying and processing this recurring pattern optimally and deterministically, we further reduce the computational complexity of the decoder. This yields an additional gain of 8.7% in complexity reduction compared to the fast-simplified successive cancellation basic decoder, and a total reduction of 73.7% compared to the standard successive cancellation decoder, all without any degradation in error-correction performance.