Does Gaussian Approximation Work Well for the Long-Length Polar Code Construction?

Gaussian approximation (GA) is widely used to construct polar codes. However, when the code length is long, the subchannel selection inaccuracy due to the calculation error of conventional approximate GA (AGA), which uses a two-segment approximation function, results in a catastrophic performance loss. In this paper, new principles to design the GA approximation functions for polar codes are proposed. First, we introduce the concepts of polarization violation set (PVS) and polarization reversal set (PRS) to explain the essential reasons that the conventional AGA scheme cannot work well for the long-length polar code construction. In fact, these two sets will lead to the rank error of subsequent subchannels, which means that the orders of subchannels are misaligned, which is a severe problem for polar code construction. Second, we propose a new metric, named cumulative-logarithmic error (CLE), to quantitatively evaluate the remainder approximation error of AGA in the logarithm. We derive the upper bound of CLE to simplify its calculation. Finally, guided by PVS, PRS, and CLE bound analysis, we propose new construction rules based on a multi-segment approximation function, which obviously improve the calculation accuracy of AGA so as to ensure the excellent performance of polar codes especially for the long code lengths. Numerical and simulation results indicate that the proposed AGA schemes are critical to constructing high-performance polar codes.