Higher order modulation effects on 5G NR downlink using cyclic redundancy check-aided polar coding technique

To have higher "spectrum efficiency" for the next generation optical and wireless networks, it is essential to combine the features of Polar codes with the modulation schemes of higher order. As per 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), 5G New Radio (NR) communication systems use polar coding techniques for control channels. As the polar codes are constructed based on the concept of channel polarization and achieves better performance than Low Density Parity Codes (LDPC) and Turbo codes. Polar coding can be applied for both uplink and downlink control information (UCI/DCI) for the 5G use cases like enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB), also for broadcast channel (BCH). We have focused on construction of one of the channel coding techniques mentioned by 3GPP for 5G NR communications system called "Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC)-Aided Polar (CA-Polar)" coding technique. It describes the CA-Polar coding scheme using its main blocks to construct code words, encoders and decoders with "Rate Matching". This paper models CA-Polar coded downlink channel using various modulation schemes whose order ranges from 1 to 8 corresponding to BPSK, QPSK, 16-QAM, 64-QAM, and 256-QAM over AWGN channel. The simulation parameters present Block- Error, Bit-Error rates for normalized Signal-to-Noise Ratio (Eb/N0) in the range 0 dB to 5 dB, message lengths and effective code rates of CA-Polar coding technique.