=====  Short Course on Polar Codes =====
^^^
|instructor|**Ruediger Urbanke**|
|office|[[http://plan.epfl.ch/?room=INR134|32-D780]]|
|phone|**+4121 6938114**|
|email|**ruediger.urbanke@epfl.ch**|
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|lectures|**Wed 9/23  (4-5:30pm,  room 32-155)**|
|            |**Wed 10/7  (4-5:30pm,  room 66-144)   *please note room change for this date* **|
|            |**Wed 10/21 (4-5:30pm, room 32-155)**|
|            |**Wed 10/28 (4-5:30pm, room 32-155)**|
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==== Special Announcements ====
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==== Objectives ====
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Polar codes, invented by Erdal Arikan in 2008, are error correcting
codes that are based on an entirely new principle and have many desirable properties.
They are inherently of low complexity both for encoding and decoding, their analysis is 
simple, they allow to achieve capacity, and the underlying idea is broad and flexible and 
can hence be applied to a variety of problems. 

Starting from scratch, we will see how simple notions of information theory form
the basis for the polarization phenomenon, how these codes can be constructed and decoded
efficiently, how they perform, and how to extend the basic idea to more complex
scenarios.
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==== Outline ====
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**Lecture 1:** //The Polarization Phenomenon//

  * binary erasure channel: proof of convergence 
  * binary-input memoryless output-symmetric channels: Mrs. Gerber’s lemma and proof of convergence
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**Lecture 2:** //Polar Codes//

  * basic scheme
  * successive decoder
  * upper bound on error probability
  * efficient construction
  * universality and partial orders
  * list decoding for improved performance 
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**Lecture 3:** //Error Exponent, Finite-Length Scaling, and Error Floor//
  * error exponent: tradeoff between error probability and block length at fixed channel
  * finite-length scaling: tradeoff between channel parameter and block length at fixed error probability
  * proof that polar codes have no error floor
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**Lecture 4:** //Extensions//

  * universal construction
  * general kernels
  * non-binary
  * multi-terminal problems 
  * source codingraphy
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=== Resources === 
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To date there is a large number of resources on the topic of polar codes. Listed below are
some links to videos, slides, and papers that you might find useful.
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=== Videos ===
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 [[http://simons.berkeley.edu/talks/emre-talatar-2015-02-10|A Theory of Polarization, Emre Telatar, Simons Institute, Feb. 10, 2015]]