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Unified Error Correction Code Transformer With Low Complexity
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AI
DOI：10.1109/JIOT.2026.3658549.png)
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Abstract
En 中文
Channel coding is vital for reliable sixth-generation (6G) data transmission, employing diverse error correction codes for various application scenarios. Traditional decoders require dedicated hardware for each code, leading to high hardware costs. Recently, artificial intelligence (AI)-driven approaches, such as the error correction code transformer (ECCT) and its enhanced version, the foundation error correction code transformer (FECCT), have been proposed to reduce the hardware cost by leveraging the Transformer to decode multiple codes. However, their excessively high computational complexity of <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mathcal {O}(N^{2})$ </tex-math></inline-formula> due to the self-attention mechanism in the Transformer limits scalability, where <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$N$ </tex-math></inline-formula> represents the sequence length. To reduce computational complexity, we propose a unified Transformer-based decoder that handles multiple linear block codes within a single framework. Specifically, a standardized unit is employed to align code length and code rate across different code types, while a redesigned low-rank unified-attention module (UAM), with computational complexity of <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mathcal {O}(N)$ </tex-math></inline-formula>, is shared across various heads in the Transformer. In addition, a sparse mask, derived from the parity-check matrix’s sparsity, is introduced to enhance the decoder’s ability to capture inherent constraints between information and parity-check bits, improving decoding accuracy and further reducing computational complexity by 86%. Extensive experimental results demonstrate that the proposed unified Transformer-based decoder outperforms existing methods and provides a high-performance, low-complexity solution for next-generation wireless communication systems.
Keywords:
Bose–Chaudhuri–Hocquenghem (BCH)
channel coding
error correction
low-density parity-check (LDPC)
Polar
sixth generation (6G)
sparse attention
Transformer
unified decoder
Journal
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