Next-Generation Channel Coding: Theory and Applications

Dear Colleagues,

Channel coding is indispensable in all digital communication systems for ensuring data integrity. The field of channel coding originated from Shannon’s 1948 landmark paper, where he proved the existence of codes that can achieve arbitrarily small error probabilities at any rate smaller than their capacity. Since then, significant efforts have been made to construct codes that can attain greater capacities with reasonable complexity. Most notably, the invention of turbo codes and polar codes, as well the rediscovery of low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes, has made this goal become a reality. Their theoretical performance guarantee and realizable hardware implementation have led to their adoption in international coding standards for various communication systems, e.g., mobile communications, digital video broadcasting, deep space communications, etc.

With the growing need for faster data rates, higher reliability, and lower latency and power consumption in emerging use cases for 6G and beyond, such as extended reality (XR), autonomous vehicles, smart infrastructure, etc., it is imperative to design novel and intelligent coding schemes to fulfil a wide range of requirements. In addition, new architectures for efficient hardware implementation are required to ensure that coding schemes can achieve the performance gain promised by coding theory with minimal cost. This Special Issue will focus on the latest advancements in coding theory and practice. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Algebraic error correction codes—construction and bounds.
• Codes on graphs and trellises—construction, optimization, and finite length analysis.
• Polar codes—construction, decoding, and performance analysis.
• Hardware implementation for high-throughput coding.
• Learning-based coding and decoding designs.
• Decoding algorithms—hard-decision decoding, soft-decision decoding, iterative decoding, and near-ML decoding.
• Binary and non-binary coded modulations and shaping.
• Concatenated codes, product codes, and spatially coupled codes.
• Coding for applications—wireless communications, satellite communications, optical communications, computing, and storage.

Dr. Min Qiu
Dr. Xiaowei Wu
Dr. Peng Kang
Prof. Dr. Jinhong Yuan
Guest Editors

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