DSL: Dual-Stage List Decoding for Polar Turbo Product Coded Massive MIMO Towards 6G Extreme Connectivity

Targeting sixth generation (6 G) extreme connectivity, massive multiple-input multiple-output (mMIMO) systems face challenges in achieving both high data rates and low latency. Polar turbo product codes (polar-TPCs) with near-optimal error correction performance under constrained latency are promising for 6 G mMIMO applications. In this letter, we propose a dual-stage list (DSL) decoding scheme for polar-TPC coded mMIMO systems, leveraging a turbo list decoder followed by a tree-search-based post-processing method to enhance receiver performance. Moreover, we introduce a two-phase codeword validity check strategy to address the complexity challenges. Empirical results demonstrate that the receiver with our proposed DSL decoding outperforms existing receivers, achieving a superior trade-off between performance and complexity.