Evaluation of Channel Coding Techniques for Massive Machine-Type Communication in 5G Cellular Network

Recently, an intensive discussion on candidate channel coding schemes for the fifth-generation (5G) mobile communication systems has been carried out both in academia and industry. We added to this discussion by providing a comparison between two capacity-achieving channel codes: Low-density Parity-Check (LDPC) codes and Polar codes. The considered codes have been selected as the standard for 5G New Radio (NR) by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). We investigate these codes in terms of Frame Error Rate (FER) on small and moderate length message transmission in the context of Massive Machine type communication (mMTC). Multiple decoding implementation schemes are considered for both codes and compare their error correction performance over an Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) channel. The simulation results reveal that polar codes under the Cyclic redundancy code (CRC) aided Successive Cancellation list (CA-SCL) decoding performs better as compared to other decoding patterns in terms of reliability. Furthermore, we analyze the impact of CRC length on the decoding performance of CA-SCL.