A Modified Approach to Punctured Product Polar Codes

A high-performance polar code introduced as a product polar code can be constructed by concatenating two short length polar codes. The punctured structure of this code was achieved by puncturing one of its constituent codes. The constructed polar code provided better performance than a single polar code in the error floor region. However, its performance in the waterfall region was not as good as that of single polar codes. This paper proposes a new puncturing algorithm for product codes constructed by two identical polar codes. Puncturing is conducted on both constituent codes, to ensure that the new code outperforms the previously punctured product polar and single polar codes. This is evident in both waterfall and error floor regions.