  As improved versions of successive cancellation (SC) decoding algorithm,
successive cancellation list (SCL) decoding and successive cancellation stack
(SCS) decoding are used to improve the finite-length performance of polar
codes. Unified descriptions of SC, SCL and SCS decoding algorithms are given as
path searching procedures on the code tree of polar codes. Combining the ideas
of SCL and SCS, a new decoding algorithm named successive cancellation hybrid
(SCH) is proposed, which can achieve a better trade-off between computational
complexity and space complexity. Further, to reduce the complexity, a pruning
technique is proposed to avoid unnecessary path searching operations.
Performance and complexity analysis based on simulations show that, with proper
configurations, all the three improved successive cancellation (ISC) decoding
algorithms can have a performance very close to that of maximum-likelihood (ML)
decoding with acceptable complexity. Moreover, with the help of the proposed
pruning technique, the complexities of ISC decoders can be very close to that
of SC decoder in the moderate and high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regime.
