Raptor-like Rateless Spinal Codes using Outer Systematic Polar Codes for Reliable Deep Space Communications
Hao Liang, Aijun Liu, Xinhai Tong, Chao Gong · 2020
Deep space communications have characteristics such as long delay, easily broken link and high code error rate. In this paper, a Raptor-like rateless spinal coding scheme is proposed by concatenating the outer systematic polar code (SPC), so as to promote the error-correction performance for the deep space communications. An interleaving operation is used to arrange the inner coding order of SPC bits. Moreover, a segmented cyclic redundancy check (CRC)-aided decoding approach is exploited to reduce the complexity of the concatenating decoding. The rateless transmission control is designed accordingly. Numerical simulation results demonstrate the performance advantage of the proposed polar-spinal codes compared to the existing rateless codes for the reliability acquisition of deep space communications.