Abstract:
Bhattacharyya parameters are used in the theory of polar codes to determine positions of frozen and information bits. These parameters characterize rate of polarization of channels $W_N^{(i)}$, $1\le i\le N$, which are constructed in a special way from the original channel $W$, where $N =2^n$ is the channel length, $n =1,2\dots$. In the case where $W$ is a binary symmetric memoryless channel, we present two series of formulas for the parameters $\smash[b]{Z\bigl(W_N^{(i)}\bigr)}$: for $i=N-2^k+1$, $0\le k\le n$, and for $i=N/2-2^k+1$, $1\le k\le n-2$. The formulas require of the order of $\dbinom{2^{n-k}+2^k-1}{2^k}2^{2^k}$ addition operations for the first series and of the order of $\dbinom{2^{n-k-1}+2^k-1}{2^k}2^{2^k}$ for the second. In the cases $i =1,N/4+1,N/2+1,N$, theobtained expressions for the parameters have been simplified by computing the sums in them. We show potential generalizations for the values of $i$ in the interval $(N/4,N)$. We also study combinatorial properties of the polarizing matrix $G_N$ of a polar code with Arıkan’s kernel. In particular, we establish simple recurrence relations between rows of the matrices $G_N$ and $G_{N/2}$.